BlackBerry Q10 is BlackBerry's first hardware keyboard equipped smartphone that runs the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.
Is the Q10 able to take forward BlackBerry's lineage of excellent communication devices while integrating it with its next generation smartphone OS? We find out in this review....
Build/ DesignThe BlackBerry Q10 offers a multi-touch screen with a hardware keyboard. The phone looks a lot like the Bold 9900, BlackBerry's last flagship hardware keyboard phone. It has rounded edges and retains the classic BlackBerry look. The phone comes in Black and White colour variants...The front of the phone features a square screen that measure 3.1-inch on the diagonal and the 35 key keyboard in addition to the 2-megapixel front facing camera and an array of sensors.
The hardware keyboard, which is the USP of the phone, offers good tactile feedback and the keys, are large enough for convenient and quick typing. It's worth pointing out that the keys on the Q10 are arranged in a straight line and not in a curved layout as found in its Bold siblings. One reason for this is that the Q10 does not include any extra hardware keys for navigating through the phone, choosing the menu and for accepting and rejecting calls. Thin metal bars that sport a brushed silver look separate the four rows of keys.You would think that the new operating system's swipe gestures would require a bezel below the screen, similar to the one seen in the Palm Pixi, but there's no wasted space here.
The BlackBerry Q10 sports a solid metal frame on the sides that has a brushed Silver finish. On the right side, you will find the Volume rocker keys with a Mute key sitting between. The micro-HDMI and Micro-USB port are located at the left hand side. The 3.5mm headset jack and the Power/ Screen lock key sits at the top while a speaker grill is located at the bottom edge of the phone.
DisplayThe BlackBerry Q10 offers a unique 3.1-inch (diagonal) square shaped screen. It's a Super AMOLED diplay that offers a resolution of 720x720 pixels and pixel density of 330ppi. The screen packs in few more pixels per inch than the iPhone 5 (326ppi) and text, images and videos appear extremely sharp and clear. It offers excellent viewing angles and good sunlight legibility.
Software/ User InterfaceThe Q10 has a hardware keyboard and a smaller screen compared to the Z10, the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone. BlackBerry has made some changes to the operating system in order to add support for the QWERTY keyboard and include some new features that make full use of the hardware.
The Q10 comes with BlackBerry OS 10.1...
While the BlackBerry Z10 keyboard offered a unique way to input text through a touchscreen, the Q10 offers a more conventional mode. You can configure the phone to show three word predictions while entering text, although the option is not turned on by default. It also learns new words and offers them as suggestions when you type. We observed that it was able to catch Hindi words typed in English ('Hinglish' if you will) over our course of using the phone.
CameraThe BlackBerry Q10 sports an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front facing camera. The phone's camera app comes with limited number of settings. It offers three shooting modes namely, Still, Video and Timeshift. In the Still mode the phone offers options to shoot in Normal, Stabilisation, Burst and HDR modes. There's no Panorama mode.You can select between Auto, Action, Whiteboard, Night and Beach or Snow scenes. You can also choose if you want to take 1:1 square photos or photos in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios. You can also choose default storage and toggle geo-tagging.
The video camera also offers Normal and Stabilisation shooting modes, Auto, Night and Beach or Snow scenes and choice between 1080p and 720p resolution.
Performance/ HardwareThe BlackBerry Q10 is a powerful smartphone in terms of hardware specifications, when compared to its predecessor. It features a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB RAM, and 16GB of internal storage expandable up to 32GB via microSD card....
