Work Day 1 with my Z10 - R.I.P. my Pre 3 :-( the transition...
For many months, as I have posted a few times getting a feel for things as some of you know- my Pre3 has been slowly dieing a painfull death with me beating the crud out of the poor thing. My wife could not stand the phone as it was falling apart, but I clutched to my WebOS HP Pre3 until the biter end...but I had a feeling the end was near last week and won an auction for a "lightly used" Z10 on ebay - it was schedualed to arrive on the 21st (yesterday) and on the 20th (monday) at night, doing down the tile stairs my Pre3 decided it could not stand to live any longer- its been used and abused to long and flew out of my hands and landed on its side on the edge of a stair- boom, screen completely shattered - as there was no plasic bezel to save it- that broke long ago...and I know if it ever took a hit the exposed glass would not survive.
The Z10 was a little more worn than I was led to belive, but the design of the Z10 allows it to take some abuse without really looking bad- thats a good thing, some general screen scuffs and one scrach that when I applied my screen protector it disappeared- as most surface marks do. It didnt come factory reset...lol..but I was a good human and got the unlock code and reset it rather than mess with his facebook and linkein ;-)
Bought a new LTE sim from verizon and had an actually helpful online chat with verizon that got my Z10 activated and provisioned with cell and LTE within 15-20min- fastest I have ever activated a new phone!
The Hub... what can I say? coming from a card based system- much like the playbook- it seems over complicating something that shouldent be... I like it and hate it all at the same time- I do not like that I cannot compose an email message and go back and look/referance another email like I could on WebOS (compose was a seperate card per message from the email app card) and I do not think any current mobile lets you do that /shrug
What I do like is the active frames, I am used to WebOS and active multi tasking- not a list of history/active apps like android and ios- there is a big difference from active multi tasking to history-type... I still think BB10 should follow the playbook and go back to card-style operation... to me even if that ment loosing the hub - okay!
Notifications are crap..oh I got a text...or I got an email...so? How about what account is the email the sender and the subject? or text with who sent it and the first sentence.. again- what I am used to- to what is new. This is slightly offset by the fact of by checking the hub I can quickly go into the actual message- but I miss getting a text reply that is like "okay" or "see you there" and being able to see that in the notification and either open/dismiss it. I think this is where android is the better solution of the current choices.
Virtual Keyboard - not having a deticated "." key on the Q10 really messed me up SO much that I was willing to give a virtual keyboard a shot- and this is from the person that returned his Evo 4g to go back to his Sprint Pre1- I have spend a good amount of time with live display models of the z10 30 and q10. The Z10 is the best virtual keyboard I have used thus far- better than swipe, ios etc. I do not do well with swipe or BB10s flick or other shortcut type keyboards because I am used to ACTUALLY typeing everything because I have been attached to a physical keyboard for so long.
Size, good size, great screen- they could have made the actual screen larger with less bezel on tops and sides. I would like to see a Z15 that is practially the same form factor but what is now glass- be all screen.
Speed- I dont know if my web browsing has sped up from LTE allowing it to be downloaded faster than my Pre3 on 3g- or if the phone is processing it faster etc- the pre3 really was not all that bad.
e-mail- seems syncing is kinda wonky- most likely the same sync reliability as my Pre3- webos has always been great on push emails- many times getting the email before my outlook would while sitting at my desk.. I would not say its worse? but its not better... also it does not update the read/unread status as fast as my pre3 did- like if I have my email both open on my computer and phone and I read something on one the other updates etc.
So, halfway through my first work day with this little guy its not that bad... I sorely miss my pre3 still :-(
My OS Version is 10.1.0.2039 on Verizon and it says I have no updates available... should I look into installing a leek?
Edit: also- is there any tethering solutions apps etc I can use? I loved using my little pre as a hotspot whenever I needed it- was soo useful... and seriously no pandora? if WebOS had it! come on!? or am I just missing it in the app store :-P