How is this even possible?
Before I start the nitty gritty of this post and my rant, a little intro...
Anyone remember the original price when the Z10 was first released? In Belgium you got a brand new Z10 for the low low price of €599 ($800 USD). Currently (after 1 year) it sits at €245 ($337 USD) which in my humble opinion is the right price for this device and the Z10 should have been sold around this price from the beginning.
Keep this in mind when reading the rest of the post.
/rant
I was talking to a friend who owns a Z10 and he told me he was looking at an OPPO N1 for his next device. I had never heard of OPPO before, so I decided to google it and see why he was interested in it.
I noticed the N1 was a phablet and offered some nice features at a great price but what really caught my eye was OPPO's new and unreleased FIND 7 device.
For people unfamiliar with it have a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9mY7Px6n4o
Looking good right? Right? Damn right!
Just take a look at the specs: OPPO Find 7 specs
I'll summarize some of them:
- 5.5 inches (1440x2560) 538ppi display (2K)
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 8974-AC chip
- Quad-core 2500mhz Krait 400
- 3GB RAM
- 3000 mAh battery (which charges from 0 to 75% in 30 minutes)
- Custom ColorOS
- ...
This thing sounds like a monster and it pretty much is but the real kick in the teeth here is not a superior Phone in terms of hardware, cause comparing this unreleased beast to the Z10 which is 1 year old is unfair, but the price tag.
The OPPO find 7 is priced at only €399 ($550 USD). Source => http://europe.oppostyle.com/14-find-7
I mean seriously? A 2K display, latest Snapdragon chip, Quad-core CPU, big battery, 3GB RAM and only €399?
How did they do it?
It has been mentioned before and it will be mentioned numerous times over, BlackBerry pricing is nuts. Just image what this Phone would cost if BlackBerry released it...
Companies like OPPO are given people the incentive to switch, they provide top of the line hardware at fair prices.
I love BlackBerry, I love it as a company and I love it as my phone. The biggest reason I stay with BlackBerry is the OS. The hardware itself is limping behind the market but it works for me and I don't need a quad-core CPU or 3GB of RAM as long as my Z10 runs smooth, and it does, thanks to the OS. BlackBerry affectionado's like me and I'm sure a whole bunch of other people are just staying because of the OS, but we like hardware too... I'm a techie, I love hardware, I love to push hardware to the limits and see what it can do. My Z10 is aging and I'm not interested in a Z30 cause it's ridiculously overpriced (Belgium doesn't do subsidized phones, we need to pay for it outright) for the hardware it brings compared to other offerings available.
For anyone saying that techies are rare, true, but there are only 3 groups when it comes to buying a smartphone.
1. Techies => they buy the phone they want cause they know what it can and can't do.
2. Sheep => they buy the brand they want cause it's "their" brand
3. The rest => they buy whatever the techies, sheep and the marketing departements tell them to buy because they have no idea that a Snapdragon isn't a fire hazard.
And let's face it, most people, even some techies conclude that a quad-core CPU is superior to a dual-core CPU because quad is 4 and dual is 2. They don't care about the OS being optimized or running smooth on dual-core, they care about it's more, it's better and it's cheaper (compared to BlackBerry)...
I'd just like the BlackBerry engineers to sit down for a minute, sketch a Phone that stands out in terms of hardware and have the sales team bring it to market with a fair price. This is IMHO their biggest nemesis. Getting a phone out there with a fair price and not acting like a premium brand, overpricing their handsets.
/rant