So i went to the blackberry experience forum yesterday in San Francisco. They displayed a number of z10 for demo in the hallway to play with when not in the breakout sessions. So i was one of the first ones there and got my hands on one. I didn't do too many things on the phone itself in terms of going into certain apps, just the basic stuff.
Here is what i got out of it
So that was my experience with the phone. Only one carrier they told me disclosed the price which would be 199.99 with verizon. I think it is pricey for a dying platform especially if they want to compete. Overall, nothing jumped out at me as gamechanging, the hardware itself is just like an iphone 5 but slightly bigger, the OS is a mix of android/iOS and the Frames is like live tiles. The OS itself will be confusing to most at first, techy people will have no problem getting use to it, the simple minded folk and non techy will probably not like it. Odd they put the lock button on the top and in the middle of the phone. Tiny hands will not be able to reach.
My impressions, take it for what it is worth, i wouldn't go BB. I'd go iPhone/Android first.
Here is what i got out of it
- Pretty light and pretty much feels and shaped like an iphone 5. I've always said the front of thez10 looked like the back of the iphone 5 and it still does
- No home, back, search, anything button on the front. So felt odd when navigating the OS, i wanted to go to the start screen and i naturally looked for the home screen, but you just flick down to up to get back to the frames screen which is the os start screen.
- The frames are like the tasks card on wp8 where you hold the backbutton, except i think the frames are actively changing since they are running in the background. That is pretty much your main start screen and it fits 8 cards. You can close with the x button, but may be little too much to manage if you want a constant frame on top at all times. If you want a frame constant at the top like a weather app, you can not, you have to manage by closing out other apps to keep it on the frames page, maybe a bit too much managing.
- Pure gesture based phone, may be confusing at first, but you can get the hang of it. I think the oldy non techy people are going to have a hard time with this, there are a few main gestures, but the gestures to navigate gets confusing. After using the z10, i appreciate the back button on my windows phone.
- The notification hub seemed pretty good, you can see your notifications and then respond through the hub like the people hub, only problem i have with this is i can't filter which notifications i want. I can filter to see only one, but if i wanted to only see emails, facebook, twitter, i couldnt. I will see everything, then i will then have to hit the 3 bar icon on the bottom and pick the ones i would like to see. Not really too much of an issue, i probably wouldnt want to see twitter notifications, so i would want to leave that out, i cant on z10. notifications stack up pretty quickly.
- The camera was pretty bad indoor, all my shots were somewhat blurry and grainy, i would have to keep the phone as steady as possible to get it to look respectable. This was indoor so i expected grainyness, but it came close to the bad indoor performance of the lumia 900.
- The smartshot seemed well made, very easy to use, take a picture, detects face and then easily scroll to find the right face. Then you can also do the who picture, i know wp8 has same, but this is much easier to use.
- Video quality, not too great, not surprising as the camera wasn't that great. No chance to try in the daylight since devices are stuck to demo table.
- Other than the Frames start screen, basic icon grid OS like Android/IOS. The OS does have a personal and business mode, where you flick down from the middle of the screen to the botton and it will pull down a personal and business selection. Could be helpful, but going back and forth would be kind of annoying, but good if companies want to lock it down. Im not actually sure if they can lock to only business only mode.
- Display seemed ordinary to me, nothing that jumped out to me so no need for me to use the world "gorgeous" like every reviewer does for high end iphones. Apparently every phone has a "gorgeous" screen.
- Browser was pretty quick, probably faster than IE10 on my 920. I found some websites though showed up on the browser aligned to the left, so there is dead white area on the right. Didn't seem to pick up mobile versions of pages sometimes, maybe it was just the site. who knows, but it was definitely a fast browser.
- The OS touch screen and going through pages seem to be normal, nothing eye popping. As long as the phone doesnt lag when navigating, all phones are probably relatively the same. The phone didn't lag when i used it so it probably is normal.
- During the keynote session, one of the presenters was demonstrating the security and some VP interrupted and wanted to do a nfc phone bump to transfer a photo(staged). It didn't work, had a try it again, worked.
- I sat around blackberry area so all the employees had z10 on them taking pics and stuff. Guy in front of me tried to take pictures and get tapping the screen, but didnt work. Kept trying, didnt work and then the phone crashed. Sucks to be him.
So that was my experience with the phone. Only one carrier they told me disclosed the price which would be 199.99 with verizon. I think it is pricey for a dying platform especially if they want to compete. Overall, nothing jumped out at me as gamechanging, the hardware itself is just like an iphone 5 but slightly bigger, the OS is a mix of android/iOS and the Frames is like live tiles. The OS itself will be confusing to most at first, techy people will have no problem getting use to it, the simple minded folk and non techy will probably not like it. Odd they put the lock button on the top and in the middle of the phone. Tiny hands will not be able to reach.
My impressions, take it for what it is worth, i wouldn't go BB. I'd go iPhone/Android first.
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