I spent a decent amount of time with a demo unit at Best Buy while I waited for my friend to get a phone (they went Galaxy S4). I've got a soft spot for Blackberry, having loved the hell out of my old Curve and Pearl, but haven't touched one since dealing with the awful Storm and Tour. I figured I'd give the Z10 a look and see if there was any old magic to be found.
From a design standpoint, it seemed to look similar to my old Droid X. Not a bad thing, mind you, as I liked that phone quite a bit, but nothing exciting. It's a touch bland, and looks like would be more appropriate in last year's Android lineup. The screen is nice, though a touch small for my preferences. I like more real estate, personally. The camera is a dud, but some of that is from being used to the really nice shots I get out of my 920.
I wasn't all that impressed with the OS. Visually, it looks like a bad mix between the older UI and a low budget ripoff android/iphone hybrid that you might find on a $99 Chinese ultra generic Android tablet that would break within a week. It's a dull environment to be trapped in. I don't know if they still allow themes, but I would definitely hope so. If the community is what it was a few years ago, there are some incredibly talented individuals making beautiful themes that would fix that problem pretty quickly and easily. The keyboard stinks. I tried to use that swipe up feature that they tout and it's just not consistent. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It's nowhere near the wonderful physical keyboards of old, and it's a big step behind the native keyboard on WP8 or any of the offerings on Android. The app selection is abysmal. I don't use a whole bunch of apps, but browsing the selection was depressing. It feels like very little has improved since the old Storm/Tour days. The sales rep, who I'll give credit to for actually knowing things about the phone, suggested that I would be able to sideload android apps onto the phone and get a larger selection, but to me, that's not an acceptable solution to the app problem. If I wanted to load a phone with android apps, I'd buy an android. The last thing I'd want to do is monkey around with trying to sideload apps and keep my fingers crossed that the ported version isn't garbage.
It was frustrating playing with that phone. There's some potential there, and I'm sure there are plenty of functions that I didn't even touch because I didn't know how to do them, but that is its own problem. I like to think I'm pretty decent with figuring out devices, like a phone. I know how to tool around and find the bits and pieces that aren't on the surface. There seemed to be a lot more frustrating digging around to find things on the Z10 than on other phones. I can only imagine how someone who doesn't want to dig around would feel playing with that demo unit. It's just not intuitive in any kind of way. It's not enjoyable to use. There may be some magic gestures that speed things up, but if I was hard pressed to figure them out with about a half hour of pretty solid playing around.
And I think that's the problem. If I was a normal person looking to buy a new smartphone, that demo unit would not sell me. It's a dull looking phone with a generic looking OS that seems to be a pain in the *** to use. That would be my initial impression. There wouldn't be any incentive to dig deeper into the OS to see if things improved, especially with the other phones being far more useful with less effort. Throw in the miserable app selection, and I don't see how this phone does anything more than sell to crackberry enthusiasts. It was disappointing. I want to like Blackberry phones again, but they just seem to be so boring and lagging far behind. It's starting to feel like the waning days of Palm/HP for Blackberry product.
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