[pjstock42]

Disclaimer: If you have already made up your mind to get a Z10 and are looking for validation, this isn't your topic.

I know that any topics expressing negative opinions towards BlackBerry devices are looked down upon here, but I just want to post my experience here for anyone looking to potentially make the switch from an iPhone 5 to a Z10.

(The first section of this post is most likely a one-off experience, so if you are just looking for impressions on the phone, scroll down)

My journey with the Z10 began on Friday (AT&T US launch date). As I was traveling through New Jersey, I found a nearby mall with an AT&T corporate store and decided to head in around lunch time. After checking out the phone for a few minutes, I decided to make the purchase and walked over to the counter. Not only was the sales associate shocked that I actually wanted to buy one (she didn't even know what the "Z10" was until I explained it to her) she then proceeded to tell me that I was unable to purchase a Z10 at the no commitment price and that it was only for "new activations". This made no sense to me as I have purchased countless new phones on launch day from AT&T stores on the no commitment price as I change phones to often to even be eligible for an upgrade. After going in circles with store management for half an hour, I walked away with no Z10 and was forced to call AT&T Premier customer support.

Premier support swore up and down that I COULD purchase a Z10 for the full retail price, so I walked back into the store and had the corporate rep talk to the store manager on the phone. After another 10/15 minutes, I again walked away with no Z10. I could not believe how immensely difficult it was for me to buy this new product. This was not a launch that was creating huge demands and causing lines out of the door, it was a device that AT&T should be desperate to sell to anyone, especially a loyal customer with $600 ready to throw at them.

Thankfully, this story came to an end when I went to another AT&T corporate store 10 minutes away and purchased the Z10 with no problem. Clearly this was just an issue with one stubborn/ignorant AT&T store manager, but still a frustrating way to start my Z10 experience nonetheless.


Ok, now on to the phone itself.

A little background: As mentioned earlier - I switch phones, a lot. I'm a sucker for new technology and I hate missing out when a new phone comes out as I believe that every platform/device deserves a chance.

Over the past 2 years or so, these are the devices I have owned (usually for at least a couple months at a time):

BB 9900
Samsung Galaxy Nexus
iPhone 4S
HTC 8x (Windows Phone)
Motorola Droid Razr Maxx
Nexus 4
And most recently, iPhone 5 (since launch)

Strictly my opinion here, but out of all of these, the iPhone 5 provided the best combination of functionality, performance and reliability.

To avoid typing a novel here, I'll jump into the pros and cons of the Z10 (in my experience)


Pros

-Multitasking: This device has the best multitasking I have ever seen on a mobile phone

-Speed/Performance: Very easy to zoom around the OS with minimal slowdown

-Notification light: No-brainer here

-BB10 OS: Really a great OS to use, very polished and genius integration of gestures

-Blackberry Hub: Not much to say here, it's awesome to have all of your stuff in one central place


Cons

-No competent streaming music platform: Having become accustomed to using Spotify on my iPhone, I made the switch to the Z10 expecting Slacker to be largely the same. I was wrong. The Slacker BB10 app offers almost no features for premium subscribers including no playlist creation or offline caching. Deezer looks to be promising but is not available in the US.

-The little things matter: To get around the limitation of Slacker, I downloaded some type of "Download Manager" from BB World that could be used to download YouTube videos. After downloading a few songs from YT and locating them on my device, I began to listen to a song and convinced myself that I could deal with this work around for the time being. As I hit the top button to put the phone to sleep and put it in my pocket as I listen to music, the song stops. That's right, you can't put the phone on sleep and have the media continue to play - extremely frustrating.

(Please note that the above complaint is in reference to a video file being played by the phone's native video player. On an iPhone 5 you can lock the screen while a video is playing and continue to listen to the sound while the screen is off)

Other little things have been extremely frustrating as well. Text messages often come in with the incorrect timestamp, meaning conversations that occurred in the past hour are shoved down the list as happening last week (before I even had the phone). Push email with Exhange is sloooooow to communicate with the server. Messages pop up on the device quickly, but after reading an email on my desktop, the Z10 will continue to blink it's red light for 10/15 minutes whereas the iPhone would know almost instantly that an email was opened on another device.

-App selection: Not to beat a dead horse here but the app selection on BB World is nothing short of pathetic. Yes, big name apps like Facebook and WhatsApp are available, yet (these 2 especially) they are horribly developed and a pain to use. No banking apps is a huge shortfall and while there are some decent games, I'm not going to pay $6.99 for a game that was ported over from Android to BB10. Simply put, BB World is a half-baked effort and while I believe that the platform has promise, BB has a loooooong way to go to catch up with the big boys (iOS/Android) or even Windows Phone 8 for that matter.

-Battery Life: Here it is, the one thing that is causing me to ditch the Z10 after less than a week of owning it, the battery life. All else equal, if this phone had good or even moderately good battery life, I would be keeping it to see how the platform grows. The thing is, this device has the worst battery life I have ever seen in any mobile device, ever.

Before you jump down my throat, I have spent hours on end scouring the CB forums for ways to improve battery life and have tried dozens of fixes/tweaks to no avail. I am literally having to charge my Z10 from 0% - 100% a minimum of 2/3x a day, where the iPhone 5 would need one charge at night under the same usage conditions.

I've been told that the battery life will "get better over time" (which makes no sense) but at this point, I've had enough. I travel for work and after one short 2 hour flight of listening to music and writing a few emails, the battery on the Z10 is down to sub-20% from a full charge. Not only is the battery life horrendous, charging via USB is INCREDIBLY slow and almost not even worth it, meaning you will need to always have access to a wall outlet if you want to get any meaningful charge into your battery.

There is just no way that a brand new smartphone in 2013, with Bluetooth off, NFC off, LTE off and the screen brightness down to barely visible, should only be lasting a maximum of 4/5 hours per full charge. One of the things I loved most about my old BB Bolds/Curves was the amazing battery life. I understand the that battery life on a full touchscreen phone would be less, but there is no excuse for this type of performance when phones from Apple/HTC/Samsung/etc. all have better battery life with comparable or better internal hardware.

This topic is not meant to incite a trolling war or anything of the like, I simply wanted to document my experieces here to benefit other consumers.

Please feel free to post or PM any questions you may have. I will be continuing to use the Z10 exclusively until Friday when I return home from my current business travel.

[Wilsonia Goldens]

Don't know! I charge mine at the most once and sometimes not for three days. I also have a back up battery that also serves as a phone charger and it just plugs into the phone, quite simple. I have only used it once when I forgot to charge the phone battery for a couple of days.
I too had to recharge my Z10 several times a day for the first week but it had nothing to do with the battery. I was shutting it completely off and that is the wrong thing to do. The phone cannot be restarted unless you have full charge or access to a charger. This led me to believe that I had a poor battery until I looked at the charge indicator and saw that I had lots of charge in the battery. After that I only depressed the top button to put the phone to sleep. I just realized that I still am not swiping down to put the phone to sleep. I must start doing that.

[nhanken]

First of all, is your Z10 having the latest OS update? if you search the forums there are lots of posts about that; battery life has increased significantly for me. One full charge leaves me with more than enough juice to last the whole day with moderate use. The battery needs a certain amount of charging cycles to be fully efficient and last longer.

Most of my friends I know have to scramble for a power plug in the middle of the day while we're at school on their iphone 5 with the same amount of usage and I never have to do that. I hate the fact that they're always crazy about plugging their iphones into the outlet because they have no way to swap out the battery.

If you're so concerned about battery life the most, it seems, then have you taken a look at the Z10 battery pack? It's a must have for heavy users as they just swap out the battery and don't have to worry about power consumption... If I find myself using the phone excessively one day or traveling overseas, I will definitely buy an extra battery but for now one charge lasts me more than a day of usage.










Posted via CB10

[alfuture]

Nice post! really helpful

[pjstock42]

Yes, I do have the latest software update.

Although, the phone will continuously tell me that I have a new software update available, meanwhile it is the exact same OS version and installing it simply reinstalls all of the AT&T bloatware that I removed when I bought it...

[xxjavaxx2001]

I dont know about you.. but my phone works for 13-15hrs with wifi on. With brightness on 50%..

Posted via CB10

[toutounjiomar]

My battery lasts for 10 hours
With 3G on
Brightness on 60%
And kind of heavy usage, your device is abnormal

Posted via CB10

[jodirt]

Sorry it didn't work out for you I don't have the same issues you had especially about battery life and as for apps I think in its present state you can find a app to do just about anything even the ports run pretty crisp I do agree with the banking apps those are kind of necessary but if you used the browser to don't really miss them which I think is why blackberry put so much effort into the browser to kind of show a lot of apps aren't really needed if the browser can get it done just as fast and sometimes even better

Posted via CB10

[tlegend2012]

I'm a heavy user (80-90 emails per day,texts,and browsing) I spend the day (8 am - 9 Pm) with no problems

[eddy_berry]

Great post. One thing I must mention regarding the battery. My girlfriend and my best friend got the iPhone 5 just after it was released in the fall. It took about a couple months before they both stopped complaining about the battery life. If I ask them now they say its good. My girlfriends phone can last well over a day because she turns everything off and uses it for text, calls and the occasional game. My buddy uses it for his business and for entertainment and he charges it at most twice throughout the day. In the first few months of them getting it, they were killing their battery so often it got annoying. Hence the bytching to the tech guy. I told them to wait for it to settle and it did and they are happy now. Thanks for an honest review OP. That 'not playing music when locked' thing would have been tough for me to handle as well.

[shaleem]

Good post Op, but I wonder if something is wrong with your battery. One of the things that impressed me about the Z10 was the battery life. It is better than the 9900 and better than I experienced with the Samsung GS3. Of course, I can't compare it to the iPhone as I've never owned one.

[pjstock42]

If I were to go into an AT&T store would they provide me with a new battery? I unfortunately did not bring the box or receipt with me for this business trip but they should be able to see on my account that I purchased the phone from their store. I suppose it is worth a shot at least.

[shaleem]

If I were to go into an AT&T store would they provide me with a new battery? I unfortunately did not bring the box or receipt with me for this business trip but they should be able to see on my account that I purchased the phone from their store. I suppose it is worth a shot at least.

I think it's worth a shot. Also, I've read on this site that there are issues with the ebay app ....major battery drain. Don't know if you have that app loaded, but thought I'd mention it.

[anon(5624621)]

Could your battery be defective? I charge every day and a half, give or take. I think the battery guru app has a "battery health" metric.

An interesting point to note about your review is that other than your battery issue, everything on your cons list is improvable (i.e., not a fundamental limitation of the platform or phone). Because it's brand new, the Z10 as it is right now is at its absolute worst (which for me is already pretty darned awesome), and will only get better (woohoo!).

[pjstock42]

I think it's worth a shot. Also, I've read on this site that there are issues with the ebay app ....major battery drain. Don't know if you have that app loaded, but thought I'd mention it.

I avoided the eBay app after reading that topic, so that hasn't been an issue.

I just had to delete the USA Today app, it has been continuously opening itself and showing up in my active applications screen, no idea why.

[pjstock42]

Could your battery be defective? I charge every day and a half, give or take. I think the battery guru app has a "battery health" metric.

An interesting point to note about your review is that other than your battery issue, everything on your cons list is improvable (i.e., not a fundamental limitation of the platform or phone). Because it's brand new, the Z10 as it is right now is at its absolute worst (which for me is already pretty darned awesome), and will only get better (woohoo!).

I agree that most of my issues with the phone could be improved with updates and platform maturation, for sure.

Also, BatteryGuru looks interesting but no way am I paying $2 for an app to tell me something I already know. Are there any free alternatives?

[Wilsonia Goldens]

Re read my edited post! Maybe he is just shutting it completely down. A NO! NO!

[kevets]

The media you were playing and stopped after locking your phone, was it a video? Because that would make total sense to me. Playback of .mp3 should not stop after locking the phone, at least I wouldn't expect it to. Don't have my phone to test with yet.

[pjstock42]

Another thing that worries me is the construction of the USB port. I can't be the only one who had multiple busted USB ports on my old Curves, and it looks like this feature has carried over.

When I plug in the USB cable it goes in at an awkward angle and needs to be shifted around back and forth before it clicks in correctly, it scares me to think of how this would hold up over months/years of use...

[pjstock42]

The media you were playing and stopped after locking your phone, was it a video? Because that would make total sense to me. Playback of .mp3 should not stop after locking the phone, at least I wouldn't expect it to. Don't have my phone to test with yet.

It was an .mp4 video. On iPhone you can turn the screen off and continue to listen to the audio from a video, so I guess I just became accustomed to that "feature".

[duc1198corse]

No problem here with slacker radio and hitting the sleep top button. It works on my Telus z10

[pjstock42]

No problem here with slacker radio and hitting the sleep top button. It works on my Telus z10

Well yes, of course this works. This wasn't this issue I was having.

Essentially I'm looking for something to mimic Spotify's ability to cache songs to a device for offline listening and I can't see any conceivable way to do this on BB10 as of yet.

[pjstock42]

Well here's a new one.

My Z10 is now hopping back and forth between full bars of 3G and "Emergency Calls Only".

[k8bushlover]

Neutron Music player will continue to play the audio only in the background.

For battery life, that does seem abnormal. But I'm not a heavy user, so can go days on standby.

[bxtzd3]

Well here's a new one.

My Z10 is now hopping back and forth between full bars of 3G and "Emergency Calls Only".

your phone is defective. could be a software issue, judging from what your saying. battery pull, then see what happens. if it dont clear up go into the store and see what is up.. reload the os is another option.