[adampageuk]

So, i've had my z10 for 5 weeks, and been using it exclusively as my only phone for 2 weeks...

The phone:
The phone itself is a cracking piece of kit, it keeps a signal better than my 9800 did in areas of low reception, the call quality is stunning, and the screen is simply beautiful. Early issues with the battery resolved themselves, and I now get 16 hours of life with 30% remaining every day. The speaker quality on mine, given the reviews mentioned this as an issue, is brilliant, it blows my 9800 and even my (admittedly 4 year old) ipod dock out of the water.

The OS
I had some initial teething problems with the os, getting accounts setup and configured. I've had the occasional crash, 3 in total, 2 in the first week. I did the latest vodafone update using a spare sim, but in doing so, lost my bbm from the hub, and that highlighted a major issue for me. The os is built around the hub and if things don't notify it, and thus don't make a sound, the phone is useless. Even once I knew my bbm wasn't in the hub, I left the app running and it still didn't make a noise... A security wipe, which reset me to the orange launch os restored bbm to my hub...

Its hard to honestly judge the os at the moment, its in its infancy. It show some history of the classic bb os, and some of the playbook os, but adds its own uniqueness to them both. Its certainly more dumbed down than the classic bb os, and lacks the ability to refine update periods, individual app fonts, notifications etc, and i'm not sure thats a good thing for a BB fan, but is a great thing for a normal user. The hub is great, and go to any other touchscreen device and your'll find yourself trying to swipe up to close an app or peek into the hub...

However... there are some missing gestures. Gone are tiwtters swipe left/right to go to top/last read. Gone are swiping between bbm chats, or between messages. Gone is the playbooks swiping between apps... What i'd personally like to see is the lower half of the screen be used for swiping within an app for back (left), and menu (right), while the upper half of the screen swipes between apps, or between messages in the hub...

App wise, stuff is constantly getting updated, and just now, the twitter app got an update that almost makes it worth using... Facebook, once you get over its funky sorting and the lack of event support is actually a really good app. The essentials though are Hub++, Crackberry 10 app, Deezer, Flycraft and DoodleJewels. App world itself is constantly being tweaked thanks to the way it renders stuff, and it is the fastest i've used on any platform.

I recommend Deezer because the in built media apps, especially the music app are a massive backwards step from the classic bb os versions. Video playback is great, and like I say, my speaker is brilliant. HDMI output works a treat and produces a crystal clear image, videos actually play better through the z10 than they do from my xbox 360.

The home screen is nice, but really should have had weather integration. I also don't like how swiping up only takes you to the last screen, i'd like a gesture that unlocks directly into the hub, since most of the time you'll be wanting to wake the phone to see your messages.

The browser is a weird one, it can be blindingly fast, but throw a couple of redirects at it, e.g. viewing a picture from the old twitter app and it would spend 30 to 40 seconds jumping between the redirects. The double tap to zoom is, to be honest, crap... it was never that good on the 9800 but the z10's is worse. Luckily theres the reader mode that 9 times out of 10 works. Unfortunately that 1 time out of 10 tends to be on forums where it will only render one post... The other weird one with the browser is it doesn't really follow the UI layout of the rest of BB10...

The camera... I appreciate that there has been an update to the camera in the new os build, but I never got chance to play with it before the security wipe. In bright daylight, the z10 takes some really great pictures, better than the 9800 did and much better than the playbook. The ability to drag the focus point is cool, and the camera is fast, tap away and it captures them as fast as you can touch the screen... I got a great series of my daughter eating an apple without having to use the burst mode. In the dark or even fairly normal evening light with the lights on kind of conditions the quality sucks, though the update has meant to improve this, especially if you use night mode rather than auto. Timeshift is a bit of a gimmick to be honest, its a lower quality picture, that doesn't support the flash, and relies on a clear face detection, a couple of strands of curly hair in front of an eye managed to threw it off for me.

The keyboard... I'm partially sighted, seeing, at a minimum, 4 of everything (double vision from each eye individually). This has always made phone use difficult and one reason I went to BB in the first place was the awesome keyboard that you can effectively touch type on. The 9800 was great, I had the best of both worlds, a bb keyboard, and a big touch screen with a half decent virtual keyboard. I upgraded to the z10 mainly because I needed a new phone and the q10 was too far away... I don't regret it, because the keyboard is so good. It truly does learn as you type. the swiping up for words is great but actually slows you down, and instead you can just rely on the auto suggested word on the space key that 98% of the time will be right. In 5 weeks, i've only sent 3 really obvious autocorrect mistakes, and while typing theres not been too many howlers. They are incredibly easy to correct, backspace and it switches the word back to what you put rather than the auto correct. The cursor to move around and edit words takes a bit to get used to and is sometimes hit and miss about appearing. The main issues I have with the keyboard is that the _ and & are too many taps in, theres no delete option unlike the physical bb keyboards (shift+backspace), and with alamrming frequency, the keyboard hides itself mid typing.

Data... I used a lot of data in my first month, but admittedly I didn't setup my email accounts correctly and was downloading lots of apps. I now have exchange set to manual (though you can't force it to refresh in the hub...) and app world set to only use wifi. I also keep wifi on all the time. Which raises an interesting point. On the 9800 if the wifi lost internet access (as mine does whenever an iphone connects to it), it would simply use the 3g connection instead. With the z10, if the wifi is on and connected, it seems to only use this, and if the connection drops, it doesn't fall back to the phones signal. I can't prove it, but it seems like my exchange account auto synchs whenever the phone reconnects to a wifi network. Notifications for emails are generally as good as BIS was, but every now and again, my playbook will beep with a message and it will come through several minutes later on the z10. Twitter and Facebook notifications are very hit and miss, i've replied to tweets 45 minutes to me from my timeline as long as 45 minutes before my phone told me i'd been mentioned.


The os is far from perfect, background apps should be a priority, making the standard social media apps like facebook and twitter as good as possible and with all the functionality of the old versions is a priority, allowing my customization to the notifications is a priority... What the z10 is though, is a damn good phone with an os that has lots of potential and a kick *** keyboard... I certainly don't regret upgrading to it.

[iloveabersoch]

Good review -I'm only 5 hours in and already find myself agreeing with most of what you;ve said - MORE APPS are needed...

[howarmat]

thanks for your review!

[Mr_F]

Good points well made. I also find myself missing the delete (shift + backspace) function from BBOS. I'd love to see support for it come in a future OS update as it really does make editing text a less frustrating experience (in my opinion). I'm also a fan of your suggestion re the top and bottom half screen gestures. I don't think it would do any favors for those arguing the case that BB10 has a low learning curve - but I for one would appreciate such functionality.