Originally Posted by
RoverSpitfire Part II
Contacts and Calendar:
Thanks for the thread above on the iCloud configuration. I tried those steps and still no joy. I couldn't be without contacts today, so I had to solve the problem last night.
1) To copy my contacts from Apple, I went into Contacts on my iPad, and one by one I selected 'Share Contact' and e-mailed the vCard to myself. Opened the vCard on the Z10 and saved it. It even copied their photos over. 117 contacts later I was set. (Took me half an hour while watching TV.) Problem solved!
2) I knew the Hub would pull in message content from all your social media accounts, but Contacts does too!!! All of my Facebook and LinkedIn contacts appeared in my Contacts on the Z10. You can also filter them, just like the hub, and link them together (e.g. SIM contact and BBM contact). Sweet!
3) Calendar? Still no luck, but I didn't have a great deal in there, so starting again is no big deal. I'm so glad to be free of iCal. I love Apple products in general, but I was no fan of iCal. It's far too simplistic and the interface is simple but inefficient.
Browser:
So far so good. Web pages are fast and look great with one notable exception. Google looks like it is from 1995. Particularly if you go to a Google sub-site like Google Finance the site doesn't render properly at all. Not even close. In fairness, Apple's Safari has always had the same problem every now and then at random. I'm beginning to think Google isn't playing nice with others. No problem, swing over to Yahoo Finance and problem solved.
Hub:
Fantastic. Oh is it fantastic. And as far as showing off the phone to folks, they're pretty lukewarm on the Z10 until they see the Hub. Then the interest is sparked. I think that ultimately this will be a huge differentiator for BB10 from the others. All in one place. No more in and out of apps. I have only one tiny little quibble... and I'm sure BlackBerry can fix this very, very easily: when I receive an HTML e-mail (say a promotion from Tiger Direct), it's never sized to fit the screen. It's always too wide. The Hub should auto zoom the e-mail when I open it. It's a little thing, but it's a sign of the kind of polish BB10 is missing. But I'm not worried about it. All those polish things can be easily resolved with software updates. The core of BB10 is excellent!
Media:
* Yup, stung by DRM when it comes to video content. Which leaves me out searching for M4V converters that will strip it out. I don't feel guilty. I am not sharing it, and I paid as much as the Blu-Ray price in some cases for it. I'm all for copyright protection, but when I paid for it I should be able to use it how I want.
* Upside, the music sounds terrific. When I've got some time to leave it syncing for a loooong time, I'll fill it up with my music collection.
* Photos came through great from iPhoto. I tried a mix of both proper camera sourced photos and iPhone photos and they all came over no problem and look great.
Apps:
* I downloaded a whole bunch of apps last night. Some free, some paid.
* Yup, there are a lot of 'standard' apps missing. Hopefully BlackBerry keeps the pressure/incentives up and improves here. Primarily I want apps from businesses, like IMDB. Some of the ones I went looking for (Shark Dash, Skype to name a couple) I know are 'committed' and on the way so I just have to be patient.
* There were lots of old standby's though. The Weather Network, Air Canada, CBC, Songza, NY Times
* There were some surprises like Guidebook. I rarely use it, but when I do it's very handy!
* Only one app didn't work. I keep getting a Javascript error when I try to use Flixster. Too bad, I like that app.
Camera:
* Quality is ok. Not great, but ok. The iPhone was ok too. It's still a communication device first, camera second. BlackBerry is not alone here.
* Time Shift: huge party pleaser. I had to figure out on the fly how to use it, but it garnered a lot of ooh's and ahh's from everyone that saw it.
Overall assessment coming up on 24 hours:
* It's an excellent first effort. It's not a 1.0 phone by any stretch.
* I really, really love using it for communications.
* The rough edges in the interface (e-mail sizing, a button to go to next item in Hub, etc.) can all be fixed simply with future software updates.
* The apps are thin, but it only just launched. Right now though, Apple dominates in this area. It isn't even close.
* I really like the phone. It's a pleasure to use, and I feel it's much easier to stay connected to all streams of interactions. For the additional stuff, it does enough.
* The Z10 and BB10 are an excellent foundation to work from. But if BlackBerry wants to make a comeback and be successful in the broader market, they need to keep polishing the OS. They need to be relentless on this. They also need to keep pushing and pulling developers and businesses for apps. If they do those two things, I could see them locked in a near even three way split of the market.
More to come though. Tonight I need to dive into customizing. I had all my ringtones and preferences set up in the iPhone and I want to replicate that in the Z10.