New switcher. Switching back. My thoughts.
Hi,
I dont want to be a troll or annoy anyone, but I guess that there are people reading this forum who are iOS/Android owners considering a switch to BB10 and the Z10. I want to post my thoughts on why the Z10 is not competitive for those people to read. If you are a staunch BB supporter you will probably think I am an ***** or just plain wrong.
For info, I own a iPhone 5 and a Google Nexus 4 and I enjoy technology and phones. In the last 4 months I have also owned a Note 2 and a Lumia 920.
Reasons why BB10/Z10 is not ready and competitive with iOS/Android:
1. The device itself is fine. Nothing great. Its not as nice as an iPhone (its more plasticy and weighs more) but probably on par with the Nexus 4.
2. The camera is OK. Nothing more. Not as good as the iPhone or a Note 2 I had before, but better than the Nexus 4.
3. The screen is nice but not as bright as the iPhone. About the same as the Nexus 4.
4. The Hub is nothing more than a glorified Notification Center with a sloppy UI. The paradigm of having all notifications mixed together is... different.. and for me it neither wins nor loses. I personally prefer pulling down from top of screen on Android or IOS but its roughtly similar.
5. Evernote integration in Remember is pathetic. Useless. Doesn't sync back to regular Evernote clients and the only view is alphabetical. UPDATE - after a reboot, the notes did sync back to Evernote. Still there is no rich text editing/sorting but its not *as* bad as I first thought.
6. The Gesture UI is fine but no more convenient than a home button. In fact, I think its easier to press a home button than make the same gesture over and over and over
7. Apps... wow. If you are used to IOS or Android be prepared for a shock, the situation on BB10 is worse than Windows Phone. The apps, by and large, are terrible or simply links to web pages. There is no Youtube app, no BBC iPlayer, no Spotify, no decent Podcast app (Podcasts is not a decent app), no Evernote, no Skype, no TeamViewer. And so on. What apps there are are v1.0 apps like the first batches of Windows Phone 8 apps. This will improve but if you compare to iOS or Android its another world and simply years behind.
8. Browser is OK. About the same as iPhone or Android. But 1 annoying bug prevents me from using it - you can change the Search provider but only to Google.com and not google.co.uk so most of the search results are less relevant to me.
9. BB Link on my Mac is OK. But it screws up the iTunes metadata for videos, and cannot group by metadata so ALL Movies and TV Shows are lumped together in a list. Rubbish.
10. HTML Email wont fit to screen so you will be horizontal scrolling.
11. Battery Life. To be fair I haven't owned it for very long (I need to return it within 7 days) but its not good. About as good as the Nexus 4 - i.e. Poor - and nowhere near the battery life of the iPhone 5.
12. Email is worse on the BB than it is on iPhone and Android. I have 2 Google EAS accounts. I set both up as EAS accounts on the BB. Emails arrive more or less same time as other devices but when you read them on the BB, it isnt sending back the "READ" command to the server so the messages will appear as Unread on all other devices. What an annoying bug.
13. BBM is useless to new converts as chances are they wont know anyone else with a BB.
14. Notifications arrive very slowly (e.g. Twitter mentions etc).
I have many more complaints too, but i think I will stop there.
Some of this can be fixed easily, some cannot.
My honest advice is this: in 2013 with a new iPhone about 6 months away and the new generation of 1080p Androids weeks away, this phone feels out of place. It should have been released in this state 2 years ago around iOS 4 and Gingerbread/Honeycomb. Thats what if could actually compete against. but against Jelly Bean and iOS 6 and the hardware on offer, its not good enough.
New switcher. Switching back. My thoughts.
It's all relative. Personally I find iOS's notification centre to be a poor excuse for a hub with a sloppy UI, and the home button an anachronism. :-p