By: iPadfanzz staff on March 12, 2013
The consumers in the US will get the touch-screen BlackBerry Z10 device on March 22 with AT&T. The device is available for pre-order from March 12 and will go on sale in AT&T stores and online on March 22. The device will cost $199.99 with a two-year contract.
Sales of the device began in the UK and Canada shortly after the company unveiled the phone in late January
The BlackBerry Z10 is the first smartphone to launch with the new BlackBerry 10 software. The device also comes with AT&T's 4G LTE network.
The success of BlackBerry Z10 is of importance in key market like the US given that BlackBerry devices, which once dominated smartphone sales in the U.S., have fallen from favor in the U.S. over the past couple of years as American consumers have snapped up Apple's iPhone and a bevy of Google Android devices.
The BlackBerry Z10 follows the big phone trend with a 10.6cm display, as well as a micro-SIM trend. The device measures 130mm x 65.6mm x 9mm and has a 4.2” display. With a resolution of 1280x768 megapixels, the Z10 boasts a pixel density that exceeds the iPhone 5. The main camera is 8 megapixel and the secondary camera is also high definition at 2 megapixel. On the outside, the smartphone has few buttons, the one of primary import being the sleep / wake toggle, found in the traditional BlackBerry position of top-center.
The Z10 comes with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 dual-core CPU paired with 2GB of RAM. It also gets both LTE and NFC, as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
On paper, the BlackBerry Z10 is quite competitive with the iPhone 5 and most higher end Android devices. BlackBerry World boasts about 70,000 apps for the Z10, many of which are ported over from their Android counterparts.
And it is not just the hardware, the device represents a new ecosystem and software experience. Giving a better experience to its users, the company recently released a new version of 10.0.10.85 of the young OS. The new software is entirely gesture based. For instance, you get back to the home screen, by swiping up from off the bottom of the display (where the BlackBerry name is). You swipe in from the right side to access functions and swipe in from the top for certain contextual settings.
You can respond to events from the Hub without having to go into individual apps, and the peek feature allows one to briefly pause other activity such as browsing the web to interact with social networks and continue working.
The Z10 has also refreshed its gallery with Story Maker which allows users to create multimedia content easily - and share to YouTube or via NFC.
For busy people, the remember application helps to organise everything from shopping lists to web pages for later reading. In addition, functionality is aided with voice control.
Here are short reviews of BlackBerry Z10 from other tech websites:
Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal
Mossberg says "BlackBerry reinvents itself to compete with all-touch smartphones":
The Z10 keyboard is the best and fastest out-of-the-box virtual keyboard I've used. It learns what mistakes you typically make in hitting letters, and adjusts. And it learns words and abbreviations you frequently use, even proper names.
His conclusion:
I believe it has a chance of getting RIM back into the game, if the company can attract a lot more apps.
Stuart Miles at Pocket-Lint
He feels that while there isn't any lag in the performance of the gestures, it's not overly fast either. He is not impressed with the battery life
His conclusion:
We can't help feeling that RIM has done what it has always done: made an amazing smartphone for its customers and no one else. That's fine when RIM ruled the roost and it had lots of customers, but there is nothing overly amazing here that is going to woo back Android or iPhone users who are disgruntled.
