Three years ago,everyone in India wanted to own a BlackBerry phone and get on the BBM network. They had the best keypads,were better than Nokias Symbian phones and not as expensive as the iPhone. Then,the company began working on the Playbook tablet and a year on,the world had embraced touchscreen devices and WhatsApp,negating BlackBerrys unique selling points. So the company began working on BlackBerry 10,an operating system designed to lure back BlackBerry fans and make Android/iOS users defect as well. Lets find out if the BlackBerry Z10 can do that despite a wallet-breaking price tag of Rs 43,490. Build and design The Z10 looks like an iPhone 5 without a home button. It may not be revolutionary,but it looks good and feels refined,especially when one touches the rubberised back panel. The only buttons on the device are for power (at the top) and volume (right). The build quality is good,and the weight is ideal. It doesnt feel fragile or heavy. Display and interface The 4.2-inch display is very good. The resolution is pretty high (1280x768 at 356 pixels per inch) and reading or watching videos on the phone is a good experience. The touchscreen is very responsive,which makes the phone easy to use. BlackBerry has successfully transferred its physical keypad expertise to the Z10. The virtual keyboard makes typing easy and natural. Text prediction is excellent it shows suggestions on the keyboard. For instance,you type ex and the word express will show up above the letter p on the keyboard. Swipe upwards to type express. The Z10 has replaced home and back buttons with simple swipe gestures. When you open an app,swipe upwards to exit it. This action returns you to a list of recent apps,which is a little inconvenient because it takes another swipe to reach the app menu. While this may not be intuitive,users will like it once they get used to the gestures. Another striking feature of the OS is the BlackBerry Hub. It integrates all your accounts emails,texts,BBMs and social media in one place and can be accessed by swiping right. While a consolidated view of all alerts is an excellent concept,there are some rough edges in the execution. For example,you opened an email in the Hub and then opened the browser. Now,if you get an alert,youll swipe left to peek into the Hub. This action will show you the email you read before exiting Hub and your latest alert is another tap away. Performance The Z10 comes with impressive hardware (dual-core 1.5 GHz CPU,2GB RAM,16GB internal storage expandable to 48GB,an 8-megapixel rear camera,a 2-megapixel front camera). While using the device,there were no noticeable lags and call quality was top-notch,with minimal distortion or drops. The camera works well as long as the lighting is good. Time Shift,a feature that captures several frames one after the other and lets you choose the best one,is quite appealing. Story Maker lets you choose videos and pictures from your gallery to create movies. The app lets you add cool effects and music to the movie. Native apps are good,but the quality of applications on the App World needs improvement. The most disappointing thing about the Z10 is the battery life. The device did not last a days usage and the battery drained much faster when using the maps app with the Global Positioning System (GPS) switched on.
