Blackberry Z10

[Chocaholic]

Anyone get one yet? Interested in your thoughts. Ready to put my I-phone 4 to pasture and this looks interesting.

[ZOO]

Reviews from friends are positive. I am holding out for the keyboard edition - a Q10 I think it is called. I suck at touch screens.

[Jim Bremner]

Originally Posted by zoomiata

reviews from friends are positive. I am holding out for the keyboard edition - a q10 i think it is called. I suck at touch screens.

eta?

[Reg]

Q10 coming out in Canada April 30. The model should likely be in the USA a month later.

The touch keybord is really supposed to be great on the Z10. I only played with one for a few minutes at the store. My contract still has time left before I'm up for one.

Alot of bad press out there.

[RANDY P]

owed it for 6 hours now. Still learning it.

Concerning the lack of apps- HAHA-- it appears they ported Google Maps / Nav and Netflix to it and it works flawlessly. You need to get into developer mode and do a bit of typing but there are enough tutorials out there it's a non issue.

It feels like I'm doing a lot of gestures to get back and forth between things. Browser kicks ass however.

[Christien]

I too am waiting for the q10 before making the leap, but I spent a few minutes with a friend's z10, and the typing was about 98% accurate, whereas on my iphone 4 it's about 75-80% - typos all the bloody time, because the keys are so small. The keys are much larger on the z10, even portrait mode on the z10 vs landscape mode on the iphone. Landscape vs landscape there's no comparison. And my iphone has become very sluggish, even though I keep closing apps and don't have it overloaded. Smells like planned obsolescence to me.

Anyway, I can't stand iOS, on either the iphone or the ipad - it's garbage. I'm jumping ship to BB as soon as I figure out which unit I prefer.

[RANDY P]

I find myself thumbing for a home button like the iPhone. Call quality is great, fast and works well...

[coldstart]

A quarter of my company has Z10s and another quarter are waiting for the Q10 in a month. I have played with a Z10 and the OS is very slick.

There is still a huge lack of apps for the BB10 OS but as Randy mentioned you can port Android apps onto it. Blackberry will not be challenging Apple or Samsung anytime soon but as a business phone, it rocks.

Disclosure: I have owned BBRY stock for the past 6 months and it has done extremely well. I expect it to double again in another 6 months.

[RANDY P]

You have to have a pair to get into the phone and chop it up for porting. It's not a drop in and go kind of deal. You need to get into terminal emulation (on mac) or DOS prompt and do a bunch of script executions. It's not a "normal" way of doing things, and it would scare away most people.

I had the phone for 2 hours when I started hacking on it but all is well...

the other irritating thing is the lack of DRM for music. I'm one of those suckers who uses itunes, so interface with that and a lot of my music won't play on the phone is kind of a bummer.

[RANDY P]

Originally Posted by Christien

I too am waiting for the q10 before making the leap, but I spent a few minutes with a friend's z10, and the typing was about 98% accurate, whereas on my iphone 4 it's about 75-80% - typos all the bloody time, because the keys are so small. The keys are much larger on the z10, even portrait mode on the z10 vs landscape mode on the iphone. Landscape vs landscape there's no comparison. And my iphone has become very sluggish, even though I keep closing apps and don't have it overloaded. Smells like planned obsolescence to me.

Anyway, I can't stand iOS, on either the iphone or the ipad - it's garbage. I'm jumping ship to BB as soon as I figure out which unit I prefer.

Sure as hell seems like it's like that with the iphone. Over the course of 10 months with my iphone 4 it got so sluggish using the GPS was useless. You miss a turn and it took forever to reroute.

Why iTossed it.

[coldstart]

Originally Posted by RANDY P

the other irritating thing is the lack of DRM for music. I'm one of those suckers who uses itunes, so interface with that and a lot of my music won't play on the phone is kind of a bummer.

It does have excellent speakers and a good music player. I am not sure of the details, but one of the hotties in my office was showing me her long song playlist and blasting some teenie bopper song-- loud and clear!

[coldstart]

I also heard that the Canadian government has placed a large order for the Q10. The next company earnings are going to be good......

[RANDY P]

Just got done figuring out how to mess with the predictive text. I'll tell you it's killer- it either learns words you type or you can input the word (or phrase) manually and it'll suggest it.

For instance if you wanted to type "PPOT SUCKS" you can set the custom recognition to insert that word suggestion by typing "pp" for instance. So, if you type pp on the screen, it suggests PPOT SUCKS and you flick up with your thumb, it's there- saves keystrokes. So you can tell it to understand abbreviations.

Absolutely wicked especially if you do a lot of shortcuts or always saying same things over and over to certain people..

(Insulting ur buddies, goofing with GF, whatever)

your iPhone don't do THAT.

rjp

[Ronbo]

Originally Posted by RANDY P

Just got done figuring out how to mess with the predictive text. I'll tell you it's killer- it either learns words you type or you can input the word (or phrase) manually and it'll suggest it.

For instance if you wanted to type "PPOT SUCKS" you can set the custom recognition to insert that word suggestion by typing "pp" for instance. So, if you type pp on the screen, it suggests PPOT SUCKS and you flick up with your thumb, it's there- saves keystrokes. So you can tell it to understand abbreviations.

Absolutely wicked especially if you do a lot of shortcuts or always saying same things over and over to certain people..

(Insulting ur buddies, goofing with GF, whatever)

your iPhone don't do THAT.

rjp

The iPhone has done this for a long time. It is enabled in Settings>General>Keyboard.

[Reg]

Originally Posted by coldstart

Disclosure: I have owned BBRY stock for the past 6 months and it has done extremely well. I expect it to double again in another 6 months.

ditto here

Did you consider dumping it or buying more in the last 6 mos?

[stealthn]

Funny I watched the launch and thought it looked like the best OS out of all of them, but when speaking with our Corporate customers who are heavily invested in BB and have been testing them for weeks with multiple people, ALL of them said they didn't like them; not intuitive, missed the keyboard, loss of functionality within the new BB server are the comments I heard most.

All of these clients are looking at BYOD programs now.

Sad I hope BB would survive....

Bob

[RANDY P]

It is real close to an iPhone now- just a few gimmicks like the peek feature and a RH (or LH?) sweeper thumb motion to get to your messages-, and insert words with the predictive text, as well as shutting down apps instantly - really that seems to be it so far.. It's a high, high quality phone and so far with me monkeying around with it all day, bluetooth, text internet usage it's battery life is pretty good.

The downside of course is all 3rd party apps are geared towards the the other two. Fortunately I'm not a big app user, I'm like a corporate user but not corporate. I'd go with an Iphone but frankly I'm not impressed with iOS and feel the phone isn't quite worth the $$$ they charge, and they are kind of belly button phones too. I've always been a BB fan first and foremost so I'm sticking with them.

I'm only on this phone for the simple fact I need to adapt to a touchscreen (4th attempt), they are here to stay might as well get used to it. For the record a touchscreen isn't the ideal platform for communication, a keyboard is.

rjp

[svandamme]

The Q10 is nice, but i hate the fact that it has a touch screen and no control pad like the previous ones..
I hate touch screen as it makes people look like monkeys whacking the screen and what not ..
And you can't navigate one handed with touch screen like a control/slide pad allows. really, i hate touch screen.

If they don't bring out a 10 with a control pad & keyboard, i'm ditching smartphones completely and i'm getting me a 30 bucks dumbphone again...(my boss will freak out if i do, we're in the smart phone mgmt business)

[RANDY P]

the lack of control pad is why I gave up on the Q10.....

Luckily, a smartphone isn't the only computer-like device I own. For many it's their only internet- so that's why they are so crammed with screen instead of keyboard. Shame actually.

rjp

[Chocaholic]

With the Z10, if you're on a call and conference in a 3rd person, can you disconnect that 3rd person and continue speaking with the original person?

iPhone 4 can't do that (unbelievable), hence my need to upgrade to a 4s, 5 or Z10.