Take
heart BlackBerry diehards, your day is finally here. The BlackBerry Z10
was just a warm up and a promise to the QWERTY faithful that their
device would come. The BlackBerry Q10 runs the all new BlackBerry OS
10.1, based on bulletproof QNX, and it's wildly modern compared to the
OS on the BlackBerry Curve and Bold. And yes, it has a hardware QWERTY
keyboard that won't let you down. Throw in a 3.1" AMOLED touch screen
and you've got the Q10. The internals are identical to the touch screen
slate BlackBerry Z10, and though the hardware can't compete with the most powerful Android phones,
it doesn't need to because the OS is optimized for the hardware inside
(much like Windows Phone and the iPhone are highly optimized for
specific hardware). The phone has a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon
CPU, 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage. The BlackBerry Q10
will be available on all major US carriers and on many carriers
overseas. Here in the US at launch, it's $199 with contract ($99 down
plus $20 monthly payments on the newly contract-less T-Mobile).
 
The BlackBerry Q10 has dual band WiFi
802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and a GPS with digital compass. It has a
rear 8MP camera with an LED flash (the same as the Z10) and HDR mode
that comes courtesy of OS 10.1. BlackBerry World is your one stop shop
for apps, music and video. As we noted with the BlackBerry Z10, the app
selection doesn't yet come close to competing with iTunes, Google Play
for Android and even the Windows Phone app store. The OS and ecosystem
are very young, and we hope to see more apps as time progresses, though
this in part depends on how many folks buy OS 10 devices (developers
need a reason to make apps, after all). Still, some popular apps are
here like Skype, MLB at Bat, Angry Birds, Google Talk (a RIM app),
TuneIn Radio and Wisepilot (navigation).
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BlackBerry Q10 Video Review
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Design and Ergonomics
The Q10 looks like a modern
interpretation of older QWERTY smartphones. I wouldn't call it a
stunning phone (it may be nearly impossible to make a phone with a
hardware keyboard look uber-sexy), but the black model's carbon fiber
back appeals to the car geek in me and it's strong too. The phone's face
has a clean and modern look with attractive metal strips between the
key rows that make it easier to find your place on the keyboard in the
dark. The phone isn't very thin, but the hardware keyboard and removable
battery don't allow for impossible thinness. The back cover slides off
to reveal the removable 2100 mAh battery, micro SIM card slot and micro
SDXC card slot.
The metal volume rocker with center
action button is the same as the Z10's, and it's easy to locate by touch
but stiff enough that we didn't activate it by accident. The
power/sleep button is up top as is the 3.5mm combo audio jack. Both the
micro USB and micro HDMI ports are on the left side. The 2MP front
camera and notification LED that blinks urgent red when messages and
alerts are waiting sit above the display and the speaker is on the
bottom edge. Our black model's back is grippy but not sticky and feels
good in hand. The phone is relatively small compared to today's
gargantuan smartphones and the Q10 is a bit shorter than the Z10. The
Q10 feels sturdy and the sides are reinforced with metal underneath the
plastic.
Calling and Data
BlackBerry phones are typically
excellent voice phones, and the Q10 on AT&T didn't disappoint. Our
call recipients thought we were calling from a landline phone and
likewise incoming voice was clear with average volume by cell phone
standards. This is an excellent phone for calls. Data speeds according
to speedtest.net were in line with today's LTE 4G phones and our
BlackBerry Q10 averaged 25Mbps down and 16Mbps up on AT&T's LTE
network in the Dallas metroplex. The phone played nicely with our
Jawbone and Motorola Bluetooth headsets and our BMW's built-in Bluetooth
for calls.
Keyboard
Gone are the trackballs and optical nav
pads found on older BlackBerry smartphones. The touch screen replaces
them, though purists will likely lament the further travel to the screen
vs. the nav pad. I have no qualms with the thoroughly modern touch
screen and I suspect the days of auxiliary navigation elements have
passed. The keyboard is pure joy for hardware keyboard lovers and it
maintains the sculpted waterfall keys we loved years ago on the
BlackBerry Bold 9900. The tactile keys make it easy to tell when you're
on target and it's clear if you've wandered from your desired key. The
usual BlackBerry keyboard shortcuts live on: double press the space bar
for a period, for example. BlackBerry OS 10.1 brings a host of hardware
keyboard tricks including typing "tweet" followed by a message to send a
new tweet, and "BBM Joe Blow" to start a BBM to Joe. The keys are
tactile and clicky, and for those who love their hardware keyboards
(some 70 million strong use BlackBerry phones worldwide), it won't
disappoint.
Display
At 328 PPI, the Q10's display has
sufficiently high pixel density that text and graphics always look very
sharp, even though the 720 x 720 resolution won't win any competitions
with current smartphones. The challenge is the 3.1" size: OS icons and
text are reasonably easy to see but text in web pages and documents is
tiny. That's the price you pay for the hardware keyboard that consumes
much of the front face real estate. Even with mobile sites, I often had
to pinch zoom to make text easy to read and desktop sites have
absolutely tiny text. As with BlackBerry smartphones of old, be prepared
to zoom when viewing web pages. Email and text messages are easy to
read since the OS handles font scaling, though you'll have to scroll
often to read through a medium length email. The Super AMOLED display
has very good color saturation and contrast and it's viewable outdoors.
Horsepower and Performance
In an Android phone review, this is
where we include many different benchmarks and analyze speed in detail.
As with Windows Phone, that's not necessary here, not just because
myriad benchmark programs don't yet exist for BlackBerry OS 10, but also
because the phone's software is completely optimized to perform well on
the hardware. This is a quick and responsive phone and the UI maintains
speed after several days of uptime. The active panes are here, just as
with the BlackBerry Z10 running OS 10, and these are miniaturized
windows where your running apps sit when minimized. Tap one and it runs
full screen with no significant delay, just where you left off. The OS
handles memory, so some apps may not update when running minimized as
active panes, but if you have 9 or fewer running, they generally do
update. The thoroughly modern webkit web browser with Adobe Flash is
very fast and is competitive with other platforms in terms of speed and
website compatibility.
Battery Life
Unlike the BlackBerry Z10 that launched
with just OK runtimes that improved with OS updates, BlackBerry clearly
focused on battery life with the Q10 knowing it had to compete with the
OS 7 BlackBerry phones it supplants. Thanks to the small display,
relatively undemanding CPU and a large 2100 mAh battery, the phone
delivers impressive runtimes. We routinely managed two days on a charge
with moderate use that included Facebook, Twitter and 3 email accounts
updates, 45 minutes of voice calls, 30 minutes of streaming HTML5 video
via YouTube and an hour of web browsing each day.
Camera
Like the BlackBerry Z10, the Q10 has a
2MP camera on the front and an 8MP camera with LED flash, backside
illuminated sensor and a fast f/2.2, five element lens on the rear.
Though BlackBerry OS 10.1 introduces HDR shooting for better high
contrast exposure, the camera is hobbled by a simplistic UI with few
controls. Yes, the iPhone has few camera settings and controls, but
Apple has a way of making users forgive them because photos and videos
come out looking great without having to fiddle endlessly with settings.
With the BlackBerry Q10 camera, I often feel that its good hardware
fails to meet the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nokia Lumia 920
challenge because the software isn't as good as it could be and I'm not
allowed to tweak settings to help it.
With good, even lighting, photos are
sharp and colorful. With stark outdoor sunlight or poor indoor lighting,
HDR really helps bring out detail in dark areas. Video stabilization is
decent but not nearly as good the optical image stabilization on the
Nokia Lumia 920. That said, with proper lighting, the BlackBerry Q10
captures sharp and colorful shots and fairly smooth 1080p video. And
it's certainly leaps and bounds ahead of Curve and Bold cameras. If
you're upgrading from an older BlackBerry model, you'll be in heaven.
Conclusion
The BlackBerry Q10 brings the
traditional BlackBerry smartphone into the modern age. I suspect it's
enough to make BlackBerry loyalists happy, though I doubt iPhone and
Android users will flock to it (that was the BlackBerry Z10's job). It's
fast, stable, and secure and it maintains enough of the UI conventions
of older BlackBerry smartphones to make existing BlackBerry owners feel a
bit less lost. It's an enjoyable hardware QWERTY smartphone in a world
where that form factor has all but died. Will it start a BlackBerry
revolution? I don't think so, but it may just be what the doctor ordered
to stem the exodus to other platforms. Is it a fantastic smartphone
given today's excellent competition? Not such much unless you're a
QWERTY lover or a BlackBerry fan. The tiny display and lack of apps hold
it back from broad appeal.
Website: www.blackberry.com
Price: $199 with 2 year contract on most US carriers
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