It’s not a secret that if the Z10 fails, the newly renamed company BlackBerry will fail along with it. So, as a Hail Mary company-saving throw goes, the Z10 is… well… it’s solid. Is it enough to save the company? Let’s take a look.
I’m not going to bore you with technical specs: Suffice to say the Z10 is, if nothing else, a top of the line smartphone. It will also have 70,000 apps, largely thanks to dedicating itself to making it almost painfully easy to repackage Android apps as BlackBerry apps.
The big deal is that the software is designed for efficiency and one-handed use. Here’s a video of it in action:
The main problem here is that it seems to be priced and designed around your job. BlackBerry has made a big deal of Work and Personal accounts on your phone being totally separate… and they’ve also emphasized that it comes on a three-year contract, right when contracts are headed out the door.
It’s a solid smartphone with well-designed software, but three years is practically “til death do us part” in tech. Wait and see what the US price is in March before you commit to a device for that long.
The Z10 [BlackBerry]