Phones Went and looked at the BB Z10 yesterday...

[powerwagon]

Man what a crap phone...just typical boring BB in every aspect. The screen didn't look anywhere near as good as its PPI would indicate. The OS was not particularly fast and stuttered quite a bit. The camera appeared to take relatively average to below average pics. There was no uniformity to software buttons within apps/browser etc. With today's iteration of bright/large screens, the Z10 looked like a 2 year old phone on its second day of release. The hardware just exudes boring in every way...it has a footprint of a phone with a 4.5-4.8" phone, but a tiny little screen.

I walked in to the store kind of excited to potentially try a BB to supplement my Optimus G, but ended up walking out with a Lumia 920. BB has a looooooong way to go if they are going to get many iOS/Android guys to make the switch.

 

[rocknblogger]

Man what a crap phone...just typical boring BB in every aspect. The screen didn't look anywhere near as good as its PPI would indicate. The OS was not particularly fast and stuttered quite a bit. The camera appeared to take relatively average to below average pics. There was no uniformity to software buttons within apps/browser etc. With today's iteration of bright/large screens, the Z10 looked like a 2 year old phone on its second day of release. The hardware just exudes boring in every way...it has a footprint of a phone with a 4.5-4.8" phone, but a tiny little screen.

I walked in to the store kind of excited to potentially try a BB to supplement my Optimus G, but ended up walking out with a Lumia 920. BB has a looooooong way to go if they are going to get many iOS/Android guys to make the switch.

You must have come across a possibly faulty unit. My experience with it was completely different than yours. I thought the entire experience was well done but there is a bit if a learning curve and you have to spend some good quality time with it, not just a few minutes.

 

[MRU]

I had the BB z10 for 48 hours testing it, and I liked the hardware and the OS for the most part, but the lack of app's I need in a handset and concerns over future apps arriving on the platform put me off taking the final plunge.

The screen was very sharp I thought, although brightness wasn't staggering in the handset I had.

I loved the little animations and at times there was a really great deal of attention to detail. The swipe to awake the phone was very handy. I also didn't find the phone slow or unresponsive except when it was trying to run an android app, which reduced performance for all open apps - as well as being very sluggish in the android application.

I liked blackberry HUB - but could see how it might not appeal to some. But I like unified in-boxes for all my data email accounts / networks feeds.

Bluetooth I had issues with pairing my car stereo. It would connect when fresh, but should I get a phone call via bluetooth, when the call ended - i had to restart the device or mess about enabling and disabling and re-connecting bluetooth to my car stereo once more, and that was annoying.


To me the BB Z10 is probably the best 'first iteration' of a mobile OS i've seen and certainly an improvement over both playbook OS 2.0 and Blackberry 7.

But yes there are some rough edges.

I hated how BB App World doesn't differentiate between what is an android port and what is a native application. It's annoying, and feels disingenuous. Also the quality of some of the apps is shockingly bad. I downloaded a number of them and deleted them almost straight away. One even forced me to restart my phone to stop it. It's like BB had just approved any old trash to increase the number of apps on the store - without any quality control.

I suffered through that with Google Marketplace (before it was Play store) and when there was an over abundance of copycat junk apps that simply didn't work or were bug ridden on your device. It was inexcusable in android world, and in BB App World even more so given the competition it has to face.

I thought call quality was very good on the device though, and the keyboard was good too. Really liked the auto suggestions. Messaging on it was very good.


It has a lot of promise, but a lot of rough edges too. Had it had the app's I use daily - I would have stuck with it. But it didn't and I don't trust it would get them after the rather barren App World on playbook and my experiences of my Bold 9900.

 

[b166er]

I think BB has come full circle. They may still have enough traction in the business world to remain afloat, but the days of appealing to "regular" customers/power users are rapidly coming to an end. For a while they were the best (and more or less only) name in smart phones, but when it comes to every day stuff the competition is years ahead.

How many mobile platforms can the market really sustain? iOS is great for the average user, Android offers more to the tech inclined and to the lower price points, and WP8 is somewhere between those two. For a personal phone, what does BB offer that the other three don't?