Blackberry Z10 grabbing headlines
This week, Research in Motion (RIM) not only officially changed the name of the company to BlackBerry, they introduced the BlackBerry Z10 which by all counts is the company’s first legitimate competitor to Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, and the big boys who have mastered smartphone technologies. The BlackBerry Z10 will run the BlackBerry 10 operating system, feature a 4.2 inch screen, has a 8-megapixel rear facing camera, 1.5Ghz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD card expansion slot, LTE/4G support, NFC, and a 1280×768 pixel display.
The BlackBerry Z10 will be available tomorrow in the UK, soon to hit America’s shores. Overall, its specs beat the Nokia Lumia but not the Droid DNA, and has analysts across the globe comparing it to other smartphone devices of all sorts, revealing that good or bad, the BlackBerry Z10 is definitely a competitor (otherwise, it would have been written off already like previous BlackBerry models). The conclusion is that the device is certainly not a killer of any competitor, but will make “CrackBerry” fans extremely happy and maintain their loyalty.
The good, the bad, the bottom line
The BlackBerry Z10 received a “Very Good,” 3.5 star rating from CNET Editors who summarize it best:
- “The good: RIM dug deep to give the slick-looking BlackBerry Z10 enough features to satisfy both consumers and professionals — like a good camera and a sharp user interface.”
- “The bad: The Z10’s unintuitive gesture paradigm creates a learning curve, and a long list of OS inefficiencies and omissions sour the experience. The bare-bones maps app and a deficit of camera features are two examples.”
- “The bottom line: Though it’s not quite enough to draw committed iPhone or Android owners, the BlackBerry Z10’s modern design and features give BlackBerry fans what they’ve hungered for.”
Joshua Topolsky offered an extremely in-depth hands on review of the BlackBerry Z10 on The Verge, concluding, “If you love RIM and the BlackBerry brand and really want to keep supporting them, buying a Z10 wouldn’t be a mistake. But I think there are better phones on the market, and I don’t yet see a compelling reason for most customers to choose this phone over those better ones.”
Ryan Hukill
January 31, 2013 at 11:41 am
Here are my two thoughts on this topic:
1 – The term “iPhone killer” alone makes any product advertisement or review a joke. It’s overplayed, and the 32,786 other product launches that used this term failed miserably. Why can a product not stand on it’s own two feet, without always having to try and be something it’s not?
2 – RIM has done too little too late. This product should’ve hit the market at least 2 years ago, before they forced their loyal following into the hands of their biggest competitors. It’s almost impossible to get those people back once they’ve made the switch.