Yay or Nay? Blackberry Q10

The new device sports a 3.1 inch Super Amoled display with 720x720 resolution and 360 pixels per inch a notable difference from the 4.2 inch 1280x7260 display that came with its predecessor, 2 gig of ram, a dual core, 1.5 GHz processor, 16 gigabyte of internal memory and an 8 mega pixel rear facing camera.

One standout feature of the Q10 is the presence of a physical keyboard which puts it above its peers, the Q10 is the only Smartphone in its class with a physical keyboard, and knowing that the blackberry has always been known to have the best text entry hardware, the Q10 doesn't disappoint following in the trend.

The Q10 also comes across immediately as aesthetically pleasing with its jet black casing with silver accents, complete with carbon fibre on the back of the handset passing off a message of luxury and class which is one of the major reasons why Nigerians go for high end smart phones.

Unlike previous blackberry models which used the email capabilities of the device as a key selling point, Blackberry seems to have borrowed a page from apple’s notebook and are now marketing the Q10 based on its application capabilities, swiping up and down bring up settings, notifications and open apps, while left or right gestures let you scroll through home screens. All communication: messages, e-mail, calls or Facebook and Twitter are put together in the Hub, the intuitive central nervous system. One of the major problems though is the lack of third party applications, currently boasting about 700,000 apps on the blackberry world they still have a long way to go if they intend on competing with the likes of apple and android in this regard. The new blackberry Messenger (BBM) as found in the Z10 also features a new and improved dark themed user interface, it features free voice and video calls as well as voice recognition which is not very accurate.

One area where most Nigerians have faulted the previous blackberry devices is with the batteries especially putting into consideration the erratic power supply in the country. Nigerians are in need of a Smartphone capable of lasting for a reasonably lengthy period of time and the Q10 solves the problem, with heavy use, the 2,100 mAh battery lasts around two days, which is amazing for a Smartphone

In all, the blackberry Z10 doesn’t really present any eye popping improvements which would see it compete favorably with other smartphone manufacturers but if you are in need of a high end Smartphone for emailing or texting ,with a very effective qwerty keyboard that allows easy manipulation and input of text then the Q10 is your best bet. What do you think?

By Alagbe Tobi

Student Pulse Reporter