[TallPaul86]

I read adampageuk's thread on his week with his Z10 and thought about letting you know of my experience with both BlackBerry and the UK carrier Everything Everywhere (or EE as I will refer to them throughout this article)

I have been phone hopping for the better part of 2 years and the pattern has always been bouncing away from and back to BlackBerry and so far, prior to the Z10, I have owned the following devices during those 2 years: -

BlackBerry 8700g
BlackBerry Bold 9000
BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220
BlackBerry Storm 9500
BlackBerry Storm 2 9520
HTC Desire HD
HTC HD7
BlackBerry Pearl 8120
Palm Pixi Plus
Google Nexus One
BlackBerry Curve 8520
BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Dell Venue Pro
HTC Legend
BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9105
Nokia Lumia 900
BlackBerry Bold 9700
BlackBerry Bold 2 9780
BlackBerry Torch 9800
BlackBerry Torch 2 9810
Samsung Galaxy S i9100
Apple iPhone 3GS
Apple iPhone 4
LG Nexus 4

That list was in no particular order by the way! Now prior to upgrading my Orange contract I was using the Nexus 4 and, as good as it was I still found some things I wasn't happy with (primarily regarding the OS and general availability of accessories for the Nexus 4)

Generally speaking I use my phone for just a few things: -

Email, Facebook, Twitter, Bluetooth Multimedia (such as A2DP Audio Streaming) and Internet browsing.

In regards to email, I'm liking the hub however like everything else that's new it takes a bit of getting used to (I haven't given it serious thought as to how to improve it however I'm sure it can be improved some way or how). My email always arrives in my inbox quickly and adding my email accounts was straight forward. What I did find was that my Outlook.com account sync's the fastest and tends to be the better performing email account on my Z10 (emails are more immediate than other accounts I have synced)

In terms of Facebook I found the app to be lacking in some areas - the most annoying part is the inability to sort your news feed by Most Recent or Top Stories within the app and that currently the only way to change this is by logging on to your Facebook account on a PC and make the changes through your computer's browser, which means any changes made on a PC will reflect in the app... That as well as the slow notifications on private messages and/or chat makes the experience look a little rushed out the door, otherwise it runs smoothly!

In regards to Twitter, the app doesn't have Tweet Marker support and as a result it takes you to the top of your timeline or feed and you end up having to scour the recently loaded feed to find out where you last were... Highly annoying!! Also it doesn't support in line media (I'm fairly sure that means the pictures don't show in the feed unless you tap on the tweet itself and then it shows the picture) Otherwise using the twitter app has been ok, the only thing that threw me off a little was the app doesn't have anything to do with your DM's as I realised the hub deals with that so the app can concentrate on dealing with the home, connect and discover sections so it's basic and does the job for now... I sent a tweet to @Blaq and Jerome Carty's twitter to see if their excellent Blaq twitter app is making the transition to BlackBerry 10 and so far not a peep

I tend to drive quite a lot so having the ability to pair up my device to my car's head unit to undertake both phone calls and audio streaming is an essential requirement and thankfully it works perfectly - I noticed that on my old BlackBerry I could enable audio boost whereas now that is no longer possible... bit of a downer as I felt that the audio boost had the same effect to what the beats profile did on the HTC One series of phones where some equalizer settings were set to a specific pre defined setting that made the music sound clearer and more punchier (I've got equalizer settings within my head unit so it's not a big deal but would be nice for some convenience features)

And finally in regards to the Internet browsing experience, the browser is very good - so much so I've started using it and leaving my iPad in its dock! OK the screen size isn't iPad size but when you do some impulse browsing in bed its far easier to reach for your phone than an iPad! And some could even argue that the BlackBerry PlayBook will be the perfect companion when it's BlackBerry 10 OS update comes (and I've got my eye on a 3G PlayBook for that!)

So all in all, I rate the phone 10 out of 10 for the physical components (touchscreen, feel of the device and quality etc). For the software I'd rate it 8 out of 10 - BlackBerry 10 has been the OS we've been waiting for! The on screen keyboard is as awesome as everyone says it is - I've typed this whole thing on my BlackBerry Z10 and the predictive word flicks I call them now is just awesome and I now can no longer go back to normal on screen typing or stuff like Swype on Android because there really is no comparison!

Couple of other wee things to consider as well: -

I got the BlackBerry Z10 Flip Case and I personally feel it's great for those who store Films, TV shows & Music playing as it kind of doubles up as a landscape stand however for typing in anything its very awkward to hold to do my usual two thumb blackberry typing so I'd recommend getting the Transform Case as it will be compatible with the soon to be released Multimedia Dock!

And to touch on the battery life, I've found that the battery life is on par with my Nexus 4 and, with everyday that passes it is getting better

I just can't wait until all the current applications that are currently android ports get rewritten as native BlackBerry 10 apps

All in all great phone for the casual user so far!

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10