Blackberry Z10, one week in. (post 500 for the blog)

Well its been a week of learning, experimenting and a fair bit of complaining here and there. But to be fair there has also been a lot of show and tell, mainly to willing participants. I have made a few little opinions known, and review style blog posts over the past week, but I thought I would try and wrap it all up in one little parcel of info, along with any other things I have found along the way so here goes.

If I skimp on detail it is because I have already covered the topic in an earlier post, so am not going to go on and on about the same thing.

Biggest question and talking points first.

Battery, far from spectacular, but seems to manage to get me through a working day at least. Example of the day, I unplugged the Z10 from its charger at 9am this morning. Its now coming on 6pm and I have 25% left. Make of that what you will. Todays usage has been pretty average for a working day for me.

Setting up, this has been a real bone of contention for all it seems. From the hardcore right through to the average users. When we all got our devices I think it was safe to assume everyone expected it to be a simple 'device swap', 20 minute job, but this is FAR from the case.
BIS no longer used, so email accounts dont automatically load and popular. Device swap not 100% nor easy to find, so lots of problems transferring contacts. The nightmare dragged on. Its fair to say that most struggled with these parts, and were unimpressed by the complexity of it.

Browser, I have spoken about this today on Crackberry and discovered I am not the only one with a little gripe about it. Speed of the browser is indeed on par with the other OS's out there, if not a little faster, full Flash support, silky smooth scrolling. My gripe is the lack of a decent double tap to zoom function, with it being mile apart from the competition on this matter. See examples below.

Apps, I think most will accept there is a shortfall of some key apps out there, WhappsApp, Skype, Spotify etc are all absent. Some are 'committed' to BB10 but this gives no indication of when we can actually expect them to appear officially.
Sideloading, this is the option most are going for, with a huge bunch of apps rapidly being converted to BAR files and prepared for sideloading onto the Z10 direct from Android and the Play Store. For me, having the lovely Google Maps on my phone is a must, so I was pleased that its a problem free port over to BB10. WhatsApp seems to work, but cannot populate its contact list. Sky News also works nicely. So on the app front there is hope yet.

Camera, another topic I have been deep in discussion about over on Crackberry. Early impressions from people doing reviews was that it was terrible. However with a little experimentation from myself and others it was found that all was not lost. Its far from horrible, simple to use, some great results if you actually bother to try and get them. I am delighted so far with the results of my efforts.
Some comparison shots between different devices showed that it was far from the worst out there, and actually out performs others in certain areas. Plenty more on this topic earlier in my blog. Camera scores well in my books.

Call quality is superb, as to be expected of a Blackberry, always has been and I hope this continues to be the case.
Messaging text and BBM are again faultless really. Nothing I have come across yet has caused me any issues anyway. Prompt delivery both ways of all formats, including email.

Getting to know BB10, this has been an interesting journey so far, and is FAR from over yet. With settings hidden all over the place, small glitches with how things behave when set in certain ways, and some of the native apps having different behaviours, there is a lot to get used to. But in general, for day to day use, its gone pretty well, and already I am finding myself wondering why gestures are not working on the Galaxy S2. Its become second nature to peek when a notification comes in. All in all its not a bad OS at all, and I think it lives up to the hype that preceded it.

Notifications, lets pop back to them 'quickly'. I mentioned that peek is great for when a notification comes in. Its almost a blessing in disguise, but doesnt quite cut it for me. You see before Peek came along, that cheeky little process where you can slide your current app out of the way to check what had come in, we had this great little thing called an LED ! It was a simple thing that with a little app called BeBuzz, could be customised to flash any colour or 2 colours for numerous different notifications. From individual contacts, right through to different apps. So popular was this behaviour, that Blackberry decided to write it straight into the new BB10 OS, because they KNEW how important it was to people on the go etc.
Im joking of course, there is no such setting, in fact there are very few easy to set settings for notifications, and certainly no individual sounds for each email account for example.
As I have blogged before, the notifications are one of THE biggest let downs of the whole of BB10. Surely as a business tool alone, the power user needs to know whats coming in, even when the phone is not in your hand. Its all very well being able to Peek, but if im not holding the phone, then how am I meant to tell.
As I have said before, come on Blackberry, buck your ideas up, there are SO many people ranting, blogging and posting on forums about this.

Case or no case? For me a simple answer, no case. I dont see the point of taking something thats been designed to be nice in the hand, then slapping a case over it. People dont walk about constantly dropping everything they carry, so why keep dropping your phone. Besides, I have insurance, so if the worst should happen its all going to be ok. After spending a week jumping in and out of my pocket, onto desks, tables and other hard surfaces, all is well, and its not chipping or scratching like some other popular black handsets out there of similar appearance.

Native apps, these have come under a lot of criticism due to their pretty poor usability, Twitter feed sharing is limited, Facebook cant get a straight timeline, Social Feeds has disappeared, Calender sync is terrible compared to OS7, with Google calenders importing new events but failing to export them to anything else. Again fingers crossed we will see some development there for the next update to the OS which will put it all back on track. There are other glitches like sometimes some lag in rotation of the screen, calender is a little twitchy at the moment about new events.
Then there is my biggest question, which now I remember I will go and test, but... On the homescreen or any other screen thats not an audio app, the volume rocker being pressed shows the speaker volume going up or down, then to vibrate, and eventually mute. Just like Android does.... Difference is, it seems to have no baring on anything, let alone profiles. Hmmm.




So bullet points.

Pros.
Great feel
Smooth OS and operation
Nice touchscreen
Great keyboard
Nice browser
Good camera (reviews all aside)
SD card expansion
Active panes work nicely with some apps

Cons
TOTALLY different OS to what BB users are used to
Poor quality device swap
Stripped down notifications
Still glitchy OS
Functions missing from native apps, or apps missing completely


All that said and done. Blackberry have done enough to convince me that BB10 shows hope and is a positive future for Blackberry users. With the Q coming soon I am sure I will find happiness once again, but the Z is a great handset for the touchscreen lover. I will be retaining the services of both I am sure.


Now my wish list.

Dear Blackberry.
Please can you address the following.

Return social feeds
Allow proper customisation of notifications again
If Bell are not making BeBuzz please make your own
Sort the double tap browser zoom
Make Facebook's newsfeed work properly
Sort calender glitch and sync
Tell WhatsApp to get on with it
Beg Spotify to get on board
Sort Twitter notification re-populating issue

Blackberry vs Android

**edited for those who feel it should have been written and formatted in a more professional manner. **

I have been meaning to write this for a while now, and thought the time had come to jot it all down before I forgot what I was going to say. So here it goes.

I spend a lot of time talking about mobile devices, and moaning about the shortfalls and glorification of certain brands. Yes, Apple, I said it, so what! lol
But I like to keep my hand in and see what the manufacturers of the world are offering. Attached to my Blackberry by the palm of my hand, I thought it was time to take an adventure, and see what was going on in the world. Having recently had an iPad, and swapped to a Blackberry Playbook, and having previously had an Android handset, I decided it was time to take the plunge back into Android. The last handset I had was a Motorola DEXT, which was good, but nothing to write home about. In fact I think I may have mentioned it briefly a couple of years back.

Having done a few hours research, I decided that out of the 2 handsets on the market, the Samsung Galaxy S2 was the one to have. Without any messing about it was ordered and in my hand within days. Yes yes, another contract phone.

So let me start this of by saying. I have been a Blackberry user for years now, and am loyal to them purely because they provide a handset and service that matches my needs almost perfectly in every way. When you are set using one particular brand for a long period of time I think it is fair to say that you become blinkered to the world around you, and are at risk of believing there are no alternatives out there. The only way to truly avoid this is to keep your options fresh, and in my case I use various devices to keep my eyes wide open.
I can say without any doubt that Blackberry is still the device I would choose if I could only have one handset. The Blackberry 9900 offers everything I could NEED, and delivers it in a great package, and with power and punch. The speed and reliability of it suits me fine, and its adaptability to carry out the various tasks is excellent.
For me, the past month, having had access to use the S2 has been great, for a number of reasons. Allow me to explain in a little more detail. Having used both at great length I have been able to identify once and for all what it is about Blackberry that I like so much, and that keeps me hanging in there with them, even when they appear to be falling way behind the competition. While at the same time, it has allowed me to experience first hand what the touchscreen world of phones really offers the end user. The 9900 is also a touchscreen but has a full QWERTY keyboard too, so its not the same, much smaller real estate for the screen.

First up, the Blackberry Bold 9900.

Pro's:
Physical QWERTY keyboard
Solid build
Nice size and weight for the hand
Simple connectivity
BBM applications
Reasonable battery life
Notifications /LED
Touchscreen interaction
Trackpad

Con's
Reduced battery life compared to OS5 and 6 devices
Limited apps available
Browser still slow compared to some
No Flash
Poor camera due to no autofocus
Slippery and easily scratched battery cover.

Keyboard and input
The things I love and hate about it. The good stuff first. a full QWERTY keyboard is the making of a great phone for me. Perfect sized little buttons even for my quite large fingers makes writing long emails and errm blog entries a walk in the park. Chatting on BBM is also a delight, and leads me neatly onto the next plus point of Blackberry. I would be lost these days with BBM, and chatting to my friends around the world at all times of day and night. The build and feel of the phone in the hand makes these chats and extended uses of the handset great
Having the choice between using a trackpad or the touchscreen is a great improvement to the use of the handset. Added to this that the trackpad can mimic almost anything you can do with the touchscreen, and here you have a great hybrid which can be used with normal gloves on of your choice, and not specific conductive finger-tipped gloves. So the overall input to the 9900 is borderline perfection.

Application integration/BBM
Then there is the hassle free integration with Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites. I am a bit fan of taking random pictures and sharing them, and love taking my Blackberry on holiday and on trips with me to record ever lasting memories via social networking and blogging. New to some of the apps for OS7, there are a lot more options for sharing information via BBM. Instantly sharing web pages, sports scores, tweets, music with other contacts on BBM is a great improvement and shows RIM and developers are heading in the right direction to create their very own social network within BBM.

Battery
With a pretty good battery life for a smartphone, I can do the things I love like taking and sharing pics, and chatting to my hearts content for hours on end. The tech world accepted a long time ago that smartphone, and great battery life were never going to be found in the same sentence again. Compared to the handsets of a few years ago smartphones have terrible battery life. However given what they do for us day to day, the battery on the 9900 does a pretty good job.

Notifications
The one thing I didn't realise I loved so much about my Blackberry is the LED. With a simple app added it can flash a wide range of colours, and at different speeds. OK not very exciting you think, but it is a game changer, for me at least. One thing Blackberry seems to do like no other is notifications. Being able to assign a sound and a colour flash or pattern to many contacts, as well as various different email addresses and applications means that I don't have to keep checking my phone to see if someone has text and I have just missed the alert. Instead I can look at the phone on the side, and if the LED is flashing I know something has occurred, and by simply looking at the colour of the LED, I will know what application or email address I have a notification for. From that I can decide if its worth checking, or simply ignore it.
No more picking my phone up every 5 mins. Just to add to this amazing function, the phone can be told to behave in a COMPLETELY different way once it is inside its holster or case, if you so choose to use one.


Remember these opinions are based on 2 handsets within the range offered on both the BB OS7 and Android 2.3 Gingerbread platforms. To recap that's a Blackberry Bold 9900 and a Samsung Galaxy S2. So now,the S2.

Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android)

Pro's
Screen size
Resolution and brightness
Decent touchscreen
Weight
Spec, great speed
Application availability

Con's
Build quality / plastic feel
Handset size
Lack of physical keyboard

Screen size / display.
One of the larger screens in the pure handset market at the moment, and certainly brings quality to the game. Big screen in this case does not mean poor resolution. Bright and colourful and capable of displaying websites and apps in good colour and detail even when zoomed out. Amongst huge competition out there with higher resolution displays etc, for me the S2 gives me all I need.

Touchscreen/ input.
Given my experience with other touchscreen devices, such as the Playbook, the iPad and a long while back the MotoDEXT, I consider this one of the nicest I have used. Compared to the DEXT which seems like a decade ago now, things have improved no end on touchscreen devices. The Android interface offers itself well to this responsive touchscreen, and the options for touch and hold within apps are easy to use and plentiful. All in all, a pleasure to use, and one of the first touchscreens I have used that convinces me they are not evil.
The lack of any kind of physical input is quite daunting to me though. For my personal uses of a smartphone, no physical QWERTY is a real downfall for me, but I guess it IS a touchscreen phone, so ....

Weight / build
Quite an imposing size for some users, the Galaxy appears to be a bit of a heavyweight, until you pick it up that is. The weight for such a large and powerful device is really quite shocking, and it manages to weigh very little, while not feeling cheap. OK so its plastic, and not the robust solid feel of the iPhone or 9900, but it doesn't feel delicate or fragile, and you are happy to use and abuse it like any other phone. In fact in the short time I have had it, I think it has taken more falls than any of my other phones of the past, and come out the other side unscathed. So as far as build and ability to perform go it certainly scores well in my books.

Spec / Apps
With a decent spec under the hood the speed of the S2 is really quite something. No lag, no messing, just apps on demand that run smoothly. With a handset full of applications, and a whole bunch running in the background, the device still manages to plough on through whatever you throw at it, and deal with things in lightning fast time. The software build seems to be pretty stable, with no sudden closures of apps, or other sorts of hiccups. The availability of apps for the device is mindblowing, especially for a Blackberry user. And gone are the days of all the apps being novelty fart apps etc. Now the market is full of useful applications for every day use. So the number of pages available for putting apps on, and the use of folders is great on the S2

So that's the two devices. Now for my opinions on how they fit into my everyday life.

The overall point that makes my proper decision for me is my smartphone usage is HUGE in one area above all others, IM and email. As you can tell from a lot of the entries in this blog, most are done via the berry. For typing long emails, or having flowing conversations on BBM, Whatsapp etc, the only way is berry for me. This was proven when I reinstalled Whatsapp on my berry this weekend after using it for a week on the Android. Just the sheer speed I can conduct a conversation is unreal compared to on a touchscreen.

Interaction with the applications is a similar matter. For apps that just supply information for me, such as SkyNews, the format in which it is delivered on both devices is fine, however the Blackberry seems to receive a smoother more regular feed of updates than the S2. For applications that require a small amount of input, such as ticket booking or social networking like Twitter, the way the info is delivered is far superior on the Android, friendly to the eye, and with the use of dropdown menus etc, the input time is quick on both devices. However the more input required, the less appealing the Android becomes for me.

And finally there are apps such as blogging apps, Facebook and forums which require a much larger amount of input. As pleasing as they are to the eye on the S2, there is no competition, and the Blackberry wins this fight without any competition.


So I think I have said all I can on the matter. I can round up by saying a few other one liners... RIM, you idiots taking autofocus off the 9900, what were you thinking! 9700 amazing camera, 9900, PANTS! The S2 camera wins hands down.
Battery life... If any smartphone user thinks the batter life of their device is 'good' you are crazy. Given what they do,I concede its amazing how long the battery lasts. But given that the idea is to stay in touch, the battery lives of all devices don't do much for me. Especially when comparing them to BB's of a year ago, 2-3 days of heavy use no problem. Just goes to show pretty apps are a PITA!

SUMMARY

Summing up I can only say that both handsets are more than capable of what is thrown at them day to day. Crossing over using the same apps on both has fizzled out now, and I have clear favourites on both. There is no winner or loser as such, and if I were a one handset kinda guy I would be happy with either depending on my input preference more than anything. To anyone in the market for a new touchscreen phone, I would recommend the Samsung Galaxy S2 any day.
However, for me a physical QWERTY is a must, so if one had to go and one was staying tomorrow.... The Blackberry Bold 9900 would be safe in my pocket any day. No winners of losers here, but the Bold 9900 is my handset of choice.


Right, I'm going to leave it there, otherwise it will sound like I'm obsessed or something..... Doh!

Thanks for reading and feel free to share your comments.