Blackberry Z10 – The First Review!!

 

With BB10, RIM seems to have a winner on its hands

Its the launch that could make or break the company, and as we came out of RIMs BB10 launch today at the Armani Hotel, in Dubai, we came away with a sense of optimism in the brand. Yes, the number of users have declined, a recent figure estimating 9 million Blackberry users in the US in 2012 as against 22 million in 2010. But BBM is their strength, with a massive 79 million user base worldwide. We had recently written about how the company is looking to outsource the BBM platform to other manufacturers. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins mentioned that could be the case, assuming BB10 was a hit.

And from what we have seen so far, there is no reason not to be optimistic.

We played around with the BB10 device, and we came away mighty impressed. Forget those rumors of the brand seeking to catch the serious users, maybe at the expense of the frivolous bunch. This is a device that is definitely packs a punch. The design aesthetics may be a tad ‘inspired but the form factor won us over. The black colored device [theres an all-white iteration as well] has a rubberish, yet classy back. No aluminum, yet it manages to pass off as classy. Come to the actual device itself, and the swipe form is something that got us quite hooked. Essentially you have n update of FB updates, calls and BBM messages displayed as icons the moment you open the screen. Flip your thimb up, and the actual menus open us. The interface was quite zippy, and we loved the fact that you can do up to 8 tasks at a time. Meaning if youre on FB, you simply swipe from the right and you have a scrollable list of currently running applications. So you can jump from one currently used element to a running movie in a swipe literally. As a multimedia device, a few trailers and videos that we tried played just fine with very decent sound. Connectivity wise, its sparce on the outside, which kind of adds to the allure. Blackberry Hub is a huge plus, essentially giving you access to all your updates in one place. Blackberry Messenger Voice is a currently contentious issue here in Dubai, so well have to see how the issue is resolved.

In terms of pricing, a purported Carphone Warehouse database leak showed the Z10 being priced at £480 SIM-free, so we could be looking at something in the AED 2699 range here.

Lets face it, the brand has put everything into this device, and it shows. Of course, the app store is a major hurdle, but they have repackaged their core strength BBM. CEO Heins had recently reiterated that the new OS would launch with 70,000 apps. And with Whatsapp moving to a paid platform, and other manufacturers supposedly coming onto BBM, things could yet work out. Oh, and Apple shares have been crashing too, btw….