The app includes all of the same features that you’ll find on other platforms with Skype running on them, but on the BlackBerry Z10, the Skype app seamlessly integrates with the phone book and BlackBerry Hub, making it the process a bit easier to make a video call to a friend or family member.

The app is available now to download from BlackBerry World, but unless you have the new BlackBerry 10.1 update, you won’t be able to download the free app, which is a little puzzling at this point, but it seems Skype simply wants to get the app out there beforehand, so that it’s ready once the first batch of 10.1 updates starts rolling out to users. The 10.1 update will mostly come with tweaks and performance enhancements to the OS, but there will also be a few new features, such as an HDR mode for the camera, PIN-to-PIN messaging and email, as well as improvements to notifications.

Skype reiterates that this is simply a preview version of the app, so there may be bugs and there may be some features that will be taken away or added by the time the final version releases. The company said that they’ll be working closely with BlackBerry over the next few months on the app, to make sure it’s up to standards.

Along with the release of Skype for the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry also announced this morning that there now 120,000 apps in BlackBerry World. The company also announced the new BlackBerry Q5 QWERTY smartphone that will release later this year in emerging markets across the world. It’s essentially the cheaper brother of the Q10, but still comes with the 3.1-inch touchscreen and the full physical keyboard, along with BlackBerry 10 running the software show.

That puts the potential audience for Skype on BlackBerry 10 relatively low, at least for the moment, though plans to update Z10 devices to OS 10.1 are already afoot. Skype says that BlackBerry expects that to happen “in the near future” at which point the app will install.

Though described as a “preview”, Skype for BlackBerry 10 does show some significant integration into the core platform. Based on a port of the Android version, rather than built natively for BB10 from the ground up, it has a new UI – suited to the Q10′s squared-off touchscreen – and automatically funnels Skype contacts into the smartphone’s phonebook.

There’s also Skype notification support in the BlackBerry Hub, which means incoming chat requests, file transfers, and contact invite requests – among other things – will pop up in the unified inbox BlackBerry refined for its latest platform. The app can be used for sharing photos, videos, and other files, as well as for making SkypeOut calls to phones not using Skype.

Skype for BlackBerry 10 is already in the BlackBerry World store, where it’s a free download.

This program is entirely separate from BlackBerry’s own Android initiative – you’ll find that previous reports have put the number of “repackaged Android apps” in the BlackBerry 10 library at 40 percent. That’s no small number for a platform that’s competing with both Android and the iPhone for market share in the mobile industry. Be it BlackBerry’s own Android toolset or Unity’s new offering, it would appear that BlackBerry 10 is seeking developers from widely successful environments left and right.

The offering Unity has here is a toolset which allows an app developer to create apps for multiple platforms at once. Developers will be able to create with what would at first appear to be the same tools and workflow they normally employ for iOS or Android, but here the end result will be a BlackBerry 10 app. These apps will work on the BlackBerry Z10, the BlackBerry Q10, and eventually whatever other BlackBerry 10 devices arrive on the market.

At the moment this setup is being pushed to only the most advanced developers, while the final workflow will be released in a form that Unity Technologies will aim at a more broad developer user base. This release will be followed soon after by a set of tools for those developers hoping to create apps for Windows Phone 8, as well.

Blackberry planned on releasing a 10-inch version of its Blackberry Playbook last year, but ended up cancelling the device due to poor sales of its 7-inch Blackberry Playbook device. Many Blackberry fanatics will be pleased to know that an even better, 10-inch tablet may be headed their way sometime in Q3/Q4 of this year. Instead of running the Playbook’s QNX operating system, it will run the more polished, Blackberry 10 OS.

The roadmap also shows that Blackberry intends on releasing another touchscreen device between Q4 of this year and Q1 of next year. The device may be a phablet because it looks much bigger than the Z10 and the Q10 on the roadmap. It’s speculated to be the Blackberry Aristo that was rumored before, which is said to have a display that’s 5-inches or larger.

The last device looks to have both a touchscreen display as well as a full-QWERTY keyboard. It resembles the Blackberry Q10, however it looks like it will have a much bigger display. It is also speculated to be a mid-ranged Curve device that’s part of the rumored Blackberry R-Series. Thorsten Heins, Blackberry’s CEO, confirmed that there will be plans for mid-ranged Blackberry 10 devices this year.

What’s strange about this roadmap is that recently, Martyn Mallick, VP for Global Alliances and Business Development for Blackberry, stated that Blackberry devices will come in 1 of 2 screen sizes this year. He may have believed that the Blackberry phablet and the touchscreen full-QWERTY phone would be coming next year however. Whatever the case may be, these devices will be able to fully utilize the 100,000 apps in the Blackberry World, 20% of which are Android ports. Be sure to check out our review of Blackberry’s first Blackberry 10 device, the Blackberry Z10.

[via Crackberry]

In our original BlackBerry Z10 Review, Chris Davies spoke about both the hardware and the software in great detail. Lucky for you, not a whole lot has changed since that device was ready for action nearly 2 months ago. Here with the Verizon version we’ve only got the addition of big red’s 4G LTE connectivity compatibility and a couple of Verizon account apps.

With My Verizon Mobile and Backup Plus Contacts you’ll now have the ability to work with your Verizon bill and monitor the data you’ve used during the month. You’ll be able to back up your contact list with Verizon as often as you’d like. And that’s it.

This version of the BlackBerry Z10 uses the same 2 megapixel camera on the front, the same 8 megapixel camera on the back with LED flash, and the same processor under the hood. Inside you’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor, the same that exists in every version of the Z10 that exists thus far – this same processor is used in such phones as the Samsung Galaxy S III (USA edition), the Motorola DROID RAZR HD, and the HTC One X (USA edition). You’ll also find the first, most updated, and only version of BlackBerry 10 mobile OS on the market.

Up front you’ve got a lovely 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 pixel LCD display, complete with the third-densest pixel arrangement on the market. While the HTC One wins at the moment with 468 Pixels Per Inch, and the HTC DROID DNA is in second (with the Xperia Z and GALAXY S 4) with 441 PPI, the BlackBerry Z10 stands alone as holding the only display on the market with 355 PPI. Of course at that level of density, it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between the lot with the naked eye, but it’s always fun to compare!

Have a peek at our hands-on photos above and below, keep your eye tuned to our BlackBerry Z10 tag portal for more information on this device and see the timeline below for our adventures with BlackBerry 10 up to and including this week!

The event was a huge success. How successful? Over 20,000 Android apps were successfully ported to the Blackberry 10 App World. That’s 20% of all the apps available in the Blackberry ecosystem. Martyn Mallick, Vice President for Global Alliances and Business Development for Blackberry, stated that porting Android apps to Blackberry 10 was a great way to increase Blackberry’s app data base. He said, “Our users deserve to have great content. If that is the fastest way we can get some of that content, that’s great.”

While it does have many big name companies bringing apps to its platform, there are still two companies that are holding out. Both Instagram and Netflix stated that they had no intentions of bringing their apps to Blackberry 10. Netflix is speculated to be holding out because it doesn’t see enough incentive in developing for the platform. Mallick stated, “There are some partners where their priorities are elsewhere, not even necessarily in mobile.”

However, despite those two declining to help Blackberry, Mallick is still optimistic about the Blackberry App World. He stated that many developers only intended to port their apps to Blackberry and that was it. But eventually, developers started developing native apps for Blackberry 10 devices. A lot of them are adding Blackberry 10-specific features, like Amazon with its Kindle port.

Mallick also assures developers that they don’t have to worry about fragmentation, because the first set of Blackberry 10 devices will have one of two screen sizes. Developers are still a bit wary about the Blackberry Z10′s slow sales, however, Mallick, like many others, stated that the Blackberry Z10 just needs some more time to get its foot off the ground. If you’ve been considering buying a Blackberry Z10, check out our hands-on review for the device here.

[via All Things D]

Brightstar is a big, wireless distributor that distributes products all around the world. About 40% of its revenue was composed of Blackberry handset sales a couple of years ago. Brightstar had enough confidence in Blackberry’s new product in order to place such a massive order, and since it operates globally, it has a better chance, than AT&T and Verizon Wireless, to resell all of its Blackberry Z10 devices.

Brightstar also acts as a buffer for companies like Verizon Wireless. Mark Gerber, managing director at Detwiler Fenton, a Research House, stated that Verizon is using Brightstar to “handle the big-box retail and dealer agent channels” for the Blackberry Z10. Gerber believes that Verizon Wireless doesn’t have enough faith in the Blackberry Z10, otherwise it would sell the product on its own.

Operating through a 3rd party is Verizon’s safety net if the Z10 doesn’t do well on its network. It’s a conscientious move on Verizon’s part. Goldman Sachs’s research showed that the Blackberry Z10′s launch on AT&T was disappointing. The firm checked over 20 various AT&T, Best Buy, and Radio Shack stores to confirm their research. However, the firm did say that it wasn’t the product itself that was bad, but the company’s and Blackberry’s lack of marketing support for the device.

[via All Things D]

Of course, this isn’t the first teardown of the Z10, but it’s the first time that iFixit has had a chance to pry it open. Overall, there was nothing too special with this teardown. iFixit was pleasantly surprised by the removable battery, since that’s something we no longer usually see nowadays. After removing the rear panel and the battery, there are just a handful of screws and a plastic casing that hide the internals from curious eyes.

The screws that hold the plastic midframe in place also double as screws holding the motherboard in place, so once those screws are removed, a couple of disconnections is all it takes to pop out the motherboard, meaning that there’s no glue holding the main circuitry in place. The camera module pops off the motherboard with ease as well.

As for the unit’s display, it’s held to its frame with a few screws and a dab of adhesive to keep it in place, but it was also fairly easy to remove as well. However, as with Apple devices, the digitizer and the glass are fused together, making the entire display unit extremely thin. The glass is a hardened variant, but it’s not Gorilla Glass.

The only difficult things to remove were the smaller accessories around the edges of the device, including the headphone jack, power switch, ambient light sensor, and earpiece speaker housing, which are all built into a single assembly that’s held in place with stronger adhesive than any of the other components. Overall, iFixit gives the BlackBerry Z10 a repairability score of 8/10, which is certainly respectable.

Of course, business customers on T-Mobile were able to get their precious Z10s a bit earlier, but that’s quite a niche group of folks that we don’t really count. AT&T is the first carrier to offer the new device to the general public. Verizon will begin the BlackBerry Z10 next week, but if you just can’t wait that long, consider hopping on over AT&T to grab the latest device on the market right now.

The Z10 features a 4.2-inch display with a 1280×768 resolution, resulting in a whopping 356 ppi pixel density, which is quite impressive. Under the hood there’s a dual-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz with 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage space, with the option to increase that by 32GB with a microSD card.

The phone features an 8MP rear camera capable of shooting full 1080p HD video, and a 2MP front-facing shooter that can record 720p HD video, so make sure you look good before you chat with friends or family, because the clarity will point out that bad hair day. Other than that, there’s an 1,800mAh battery, micro HDMI support, and Bluetooth 4.0 on the inside.

“The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old” he concluded. In contrast, Heins claimed, BlackBerry 10 is better at multi-tasking than Apple’s phone, .

The CEO wouldn’t be drawn on specific sales figures, pointing out that BlackBerry is in a quiet period ahead of announcing its latest financial results. However, he did re-confirm that the company is considering the potential for licensing BlackBerry 10 – assuming it could find other manufacturers sufficiently interested in using it on their own devices – but said that, right now, the focus is on the roll-out of the Z10.

Hardware we shouldn’t expect to see delivered any time soon is a tablet, though. Here, Heins gives Apple a little more credit: “Kudos to Apple, I think they really managed to own that space, so it doesn’t make sense for me to just take this head on” he conceded. “I need to figure out, for my enterprise customers, for my consumers, for my BB10 audience, what can I do that provides them a mobile computing experience in the form factor of a tablet, which goes beyond just the puristic tablet experience.”

That stance echoes comments by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who has repeatedly said that the Finnish firm will only wade into the tablet space once it can find a sufficiently unique angle to take with it. “I think the profit pool is very very thin,” BlackBerry’s Heins mused.

Verizon boasts a black version of the Blackberry Z10 in addition to the white one offered by AT&T. The handset costs $200 with a two-year contract, a price that many feel is too steep for a phone that the company is hinging so much on. While many handsets have been launched at this price point, including the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III, Blackberry isn’t a major player in the market, leading some to question the wisdom in the pricing. You can read more about this in our write up here.

If you’re a Blackberry faithful, however, or want to give the platform a shot and aren’t afraid to drop $200 and take on a new 2-year contract, you can head over to Verizon and place your order now. Still undecided? Read our review of the Blackberry Z10 to get a better idea of whether it’s the phone for you.

The BB Z10 features a 4.2-inch 1280 x 768 display, as well as a 2-megapixel front camera and an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash. Inside, users will find a Qualcomm MSM8960 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM, as well as 16GB of internal storage. There’s a microSD slot for storage expansion with support for up to 32GB.

[via PC World]

Verizon says that the new Z10 will be available online and in Verizon Wireless stores starting March 28, and customers will have their pick at either a black or white model, with white being a Verizon exclusive. So, if you’re wanting to show off your Verizon pride, getting a white Z10 will be the only way to fully stand out from the other Z10 owners.

As expected, Verizon will be pricing the BlackBerry Z10 at $199.99 after signing a new two-year contract, which may be a bit too steep for such a device, but we digress. Verizon won’t be the first US carrier to make the phone available, however. T-Mobile made the Z10 available to its business customers first starting on March 11, with AT&T releasing the Z10 on March 22.

Of course, the $199 price tag puts the Z10 at the same price point as the entry level iPhone 5 model, which may raise some concerns as far as whether or not the Z10 can compete with the iPhone 5, especially when they’re the same price. As for the Q10, Verizon will be offering it eventually, but no further details have been announced yet.

$200 has become the “norm” for a new high-end phone launch. The Galaxy S III arrived at $199.99; the iPhone 5 did too. HTC’s One will likely command the same amount when it hits US carriers in the coming months. The carriers have settled on a figure that has proved to be psychologically acceptable for the mass market (even if that mass market would probably save itself some money by paying full-whack for its new phone rather than expecting a network subsidy).

Whether it’s AT&T, Verizon, or BlackBerry itself, however, the pricing for the Z10 seems to have been knee-jerk rather than fully thought-through. Yes, $200 may be the expected price, but the Z10 comes to the market as a challenger, not as another proven quantity. Price was the first point at which the networks could properly express that challenger appetite, but they opted not to.

Sure, the BlackBerry faithful will probably stomach two-hundred bucks to get their hands on what’s a significant improvement over their existing phones. Yet selling to the same, minority-share market – one which has seen many deserters already jump ship to Android or iPhone – isn’t a strategy for growth. BlackBerry 10 needs fresh blood attracted to the platform, not just more of the same.

The closest comparison is probably Windows Phone, which is also fighting to build its share in the smartphone segment. Verizon will sell you an HTC 8X for $99.99 with a new agreement, however, while AT&T will happily hand over a Nokia 920 at the same price. Like the Z10, neither is a perfect device, but Windows Phone undoubtedly has its strengths and with the pricing, both carriers are making them look especially appealing for new smartphone users.

BlackBerry took the decision to eschew Android and use its own platform; I can respect that. However, it also needs to wake up to the reality of the situation it thus finds itself in as a company, trying to break into a hectic and aggressive market with an unproven OS. That’s a tough fight at the best of times, but pushing for premium pricing as well seems at best an unnecessary challenge and at worst a clear misreading of the mobile industry today.

The Z10 will use AT&T’s LTE network, for faster download speeds, but early-adopters of the new BlackBerry 10 platform will have to stomach the usual two-year commitment and a price more commonly associated with a new iPhone or top-tier Android device. That could be overly-ambitious for AT&T and BlackBerry, with the Z10 decidedly occupying the “challenger” category right now.

As we found in our review, the Z10 does some things well – the screen is good, and the software is a significant improvement over BlackBerry 7 – but it also falls short in places. Mediocre low-light camera performance has in part been addressed by a recent firmware update, but the handset also has middling design and build quality in comparison to, say, Apple’s phone.

Still, AT&T isn’t the only carrier to have high expectations for what BlackBerry fans might pay. Verizon confirmed some time ago that it would be offering the Z10 this month, also pricing it at $199.99 with a new, two-year agreement. T-Mobile, meanwhile, will begin sales to business customers from today.

Those who purchase on Monday could then receive their BlackBerry Z10 by Friday of next week. This is similar to what the sources had to say about AT&T and the Z10, which is set for March 22 for consumers, not just business customers, according to sources. If that proves true, there’s a chance consumers will see wider availability of the Z10 to non-business customers via T-Mobile later this month after the launch for business customers, although nothing specific was stated by the carrier.

The BlackBerry Z10 has been available to European consumers for a while now, but has been delayed in the United States due to longer testing periods required by carriers. The US is a big market for the company formerly known as RIM, which announced BlackBerry 10 and the handset back in January, a platform and device the company hopes will help it regain market share.

The BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2-inch 1280 x 720 LCD display, as well as a rear 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash and a front 2-megapixel camera. Inside, users will find a Qualcomm MSM8960 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of internal storage space. There’s a microSD slot for additional memory expansion for up to 32GB. Connectivity is comprised of quad-band UMTS/HSPA+ and GMS/EDGE, LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n. You can check out our full review of the Z10 here.

[via Reuters]

Customers in the US that are interested in the new BlackBerry smartphone may appreciate the fact that the launch date has been leaked for AT&T. The phone will come to AT&T in the United States on March 22. The launch date comes from sources claiming to be familiar with BlackBerry and AT&T’s plans, but those sources asked to remain anonymous because the release date hasn’t been announced officially.

The United States is a big market for BlackBerry, which reportedly earns about a fifth of its revenue within the US. The reason the phone didn’t launch in the US at the same time it launched in Europe and about 20 other countries was because of the longer testing times required by carriers in the United States. A spokesman for AT&T also declined to confirm the launch date for the BlackBerry Z10.

The upside to having a delay on the launch of the smartphone in the United States is that BlackBerry has already released an update for the BlackBerry 10 software. The update fixes issues with the battery life and lowlight camera performance for the Z10.

[via Bloomberg]

Carphone Warehouse has reduced the pricing of its Blackberry Z10 devices down from 36 euros per month to 29 euros per month with a 29 euro up-front cost. The total price-reduction is said to equal about 160 euros. Vodaphone has reduced the pricing of its Z10 to around 33 euros per month, which is about a 72 euro total price reduction throughout the entire contract.

James Faucette, an analyst at Pacific Crest stated, “We believe that meaningful price cuts so soon after launch, while probably at the initial discretion of the carriers, is likely to relegate the Z10 to being a mid-tier device with very low gross margins.” The price-reduction sends out a bad message saying that the new OS still isn’t enough to attract users from other popular platforms like Android or iOS.

Many critics have stated, however, that the Blackberry Z10 is a great device. It has an intuitive UI, beautiful design, and is great at multi-tasking and productivity. The app base is at a great start, with over 70,000 apps being available at launch. Blackberry has even reported that 1/3 of British Z10 owners did not previously own a Blackberry device. Blackberry has come a long way and is delivering the user experience consumers have been asking for. Here’s hoping for a successful U.S. launch.

[via The Telegraph]

The deal was made between smartphone security firm Secusmart and the Procurement Office of the Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Office for Information Security for all smartphones for the German government just this week, and confirmed by SlashGear at CeBIT 2013. Of course, BlackBerry has been known to be a trusted platform for security, so it doesn’t surprise that companies and organizations still believe in it.

German government users will also be using BlackBerry Balance on their Z10 devices. This will allow users to have the freedom they deserve when using their phones, such as browsing Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds, but the IT department will still have full control when it comes to top secret information on the mobile devices.

While independent reports this week have suggested that half of the staff are currently using Samsung Android devices, most likely the Galaxy S III or the Galaxy Note series, it’s been confirmed that 5,000 more government employees will be receiving the BlackBerry Z10. And since BlackBerry Balance will provide a personal life and work life balance on the devices, the intrigue should be up there for prospective users.

EDIT [via Chris Burns] : Again, we’ve had confirmation of this straight from the source at CeBIT 2013, where we’re also seeing the security technology therein being applied straight through the device’s microSD card slot. Wild stuff! Stay tuned for more information on how this is all being made possible in the very near future!

One of the most important changes will be to battery life, with BlackBerry saying that it has wrapped up more than 60 optimizations to try to address complaints. Poor runtimes from the Z10 were one of our key complaints when we reviewed the smartphone, with it often failing to make it through a full day. “Heavy users especially should see a longer average usage per charge cycle” BlackBerry claims, though gives no specifics as to what has changed.

Elsewhere, there should be improved low-light performance from the camera, another point of contention among early-adopters, who felt the Z10′s shots were simply too dark. The way BlackBerry 10 deals with call logging and conversations has also been tweaked, and there’s a fix for using Google Calendars on the platform. Pulling in contacts from online databases is also smoothed.

Video playback in the browser has been refined, and BlackBerry has also fettled the third-party app environment. That should be “fast and smooth” now, the company says, pointing out that a new influx of titles – such as WhatsApp – is expected in March.

The recommendation is that users update to 10.0.10.85 over a WiFi connection, since 150MB might be slow going (or just plain expensive) over mobile data. It will pop up as a notification over “the coming weeks”, or owners can update manually by going to “Check for Updates” in the Software Updates section of the settings.

Walkley trimmed his estimates based on mixed initial sales of the Z10 along with a later-than-expected launch in the US. Currently, the Z10 is only available in Canada and the UK, with a US launch on all major carriers sometime next month. However, once the Z10 launches in the US, Walkley isn’t expecting a lot of reception, saying that he anticipates carriers to not have large inventories of the device.

BlackBerry announced the Z10 earlier this month on February 5, where the company also introduced the Q10, which is another new touchscreen smartphone but with a physical keyboard on board. These two phones, along with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system, are the company’s answers to moving their business forward and attempt to bounce back from six straight quarters of losses.

Of course, Walkley mentioned that BlackBerry still faces stiff competition from iOS and Android this year. Both Apple and Samsung will most likely launch new smartphones this year: the rumored iPhone 5S and the Galaxy S IV, both of which are said to be arriving with some pretty mean features on board.

[via Investors.com]

The 4.2-inch display for the Z10 costs around $26.50. The 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor costs about $23.50. The 8MP rear-facing camera and 2MP front-facing camera totals about $15. The 16GB internal storage costs around $9.00. The other components, including the battery, communication chips, and RAM total $21.00. Finally, the casing, as well as the other small electronics included in the Z10 total around $59.00. All of this adds up to $154.

The Blackberry Z10 is slightly more expensive to create compared to the iPhone 5, which costs about $139 to make. But in the Z10′s defense, the Z10 has a bigger, higher resolution screen, more RAM, and a bigger battery. Blackberry hasn’t released how much the unsubsidized price for the Blackberry Z10 yet, so we can’t really determine how much profit Blackberry makes off each phone.

The Blackberry Z10 won’t launch in the U.S. until March, and it has been confirmed, at least by Verizon Wireless, that the device will retail with a subsidized price of $199.99. Blackberry is hoping that with its new OS overhaul, it will be able to compete in a market that it once used to dominate. While many people are loving the new UI that comes with the Blackberry 10 OS, it will still be hard for Blackberry to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung, who is rumored to be announcing its new, highly-anticipated Samsung Galaxy S IV on March 15th.

[via CNN Money]

Where TI was previously a mainstay for processors and chips in BlackBerry phones, the Z10 instead looks to Qualcomm for its 1.5GHz dualcore processor, 3G/LTE modem, GPU, power management chip, GPS, and more. TI is relegated to providing the WiFi/Bluetooth/FM combo chip, while Samsung donates the flash memory and RAM.

Perhaps more interesting than the origin of the components is the decision process BlackBerry (nee RIM) seemingly made in how they were combined, something which is supposedly strongly reminiscent of Samsung’s assembly strategy with the Galaxy series. Various parts – from the processor that’s also in the LTE Galaxy S III, to the new WCD9310 audio codec in the same phone – seem to indicate that BlackBerry certainly knows who its key rivals are.

“It’s not certain if these decisions the designers made on what semiconductors, ICs and other modules to use were by design or by accident” UBM concludes, “but based on the relative success of the Samsung Galaxy S3, it isn’t a bad model to draw from.”

If you’re more interested in how the BlackBerry Z10 – and BlackBerry 10 as a platform – performs when the phone is in one piece, check out our full review.

[via Gizmodo]

Official word from BlackBerry is that “in Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone.” That’s saying something for the Canada-based manufacturer and developer of the entire BlackBerry lineup. With the launch of BlackBerry 10 came the all-touch BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, the first in a series of smartphones to run the new operating system. With this device being the one and only smartphone to be on the market here at launch with BlackBerry 10, the success should be well received.

BlackBerry’s announcement that the first full week of BlackBerry Z10 sales are not double, but nearly three times as good as they’ve been with any previous release should also be seen as a sign that the company has done something right. Currently the BlackBerry Z10 is only available inside Canada and the UK, with a developer edition Red model appearing in the mail for developers around the world this week as well. That developer edition unit was (and continues to be) available to developers participating in a special offer where they create an app for BlackBerry 10 in time for its full final launch – grab one!

With word straight from Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of BlackBerry on this great success, we must hold our BlackBerry 10 flags high, hoping for the best! Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insights and a full review of the BlackBerry Z10 as well.

The original name for BlackBerry 10 was BBX – lost to the company when they discovered someone else that thought to put those three letters together before RIM did. Each time an incident like this happened over the past year and a half, RIM lost another brick of confidence in the public. They’ve had so much bad press between the announcement of BBX and here in 2013 where they’ve announced the OS (again) that it should be considered no less than a miracle that they’ve gotten so very many developers to join their team with BlackBerry 10 apps.

Of course about 40% of those apps are simply converted iterations of Android apps, but who’s counting? Giving away free special edition smartphones to developer initiatives helps!

Now while the all-touch half of the BlackBerry 10 party is already out in Canada and the UK with the device called BlackBerry Z10, it’s been made clear that the earliest we’ll see BlackBerry 10 in the wild in the USA will be the end of March. This is also only the Z10 piece of the puzzle. The BlackBerry Q10, that being the QWERTY keyboard-toting BlackBerry 10 hero device here at the start of the OS, has been confirmed by BlackBerry to be hitting the market in April.

According to the Associated Press article published with Mercury News, BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins has suggested an 8-10 week window between the launch of the Z10 and the Q10. That would place the release for the Q10 back to May/June. Just a few months shy of two years after the first announcement of BlackBerry 10!

That’s no way to work in this modern mobile-minded market. A successful company like Samsung releases a new smartphone every few months – weeks in some cases – and refreshes a piece of hardware at least once a year (we’re nearly up to the Samsung Galaxy S IV here in 2013 after a new Galaxy S hero phone for several years in a row.) Apple has gotten to the point where they release a new iteration of their one singular handset, the iPhone, every single year without fail.

Will you join the BlackBerry 10 party with a Z10 at the end of March or the beginning of April if it does indeed see release in the USA? How about a BlackBerry Q10 several weeks after that?

The “Limited Edition Process” can still be seen on the official BlackBerry website for developers with a mystery package at the end of a timeline. This set of instructions shows that it was developers working with BlackBerry 10 apps and submitting a qualifying app to the company before January 21st, 2013, that were able to get in on this hot red party. This process was originally shown to have been delivering a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device which was then requested back before the BlackBerry 10 Launch Event.

UPDATE: Developers can still get in on the action as the BlackBerry team has extended the deadline for the Limited Edition Z10 to February 28th – head to that Limited Edition Process link and get your coding fingers out!

Amazingly it appears that a “6-8 week” launch window has been broken to pieces by BlackBerry (still called RIM when this whole process began) as developers have already begun receiving what up until now was still a mystery package. The package was described as simply “The Limited Edition device” and was noted as being “a specially designed fully functional BlackBerry 10 device built to help recognize those developers that helped launch the BlackBerry 10 platform by submitting quality 3rd party applications.” Rather simple and entirely enticing.

This is now one of three different editions of the BlackBerry Z10 that will be on the market, the first being a standard black version and the second being a white edition offered only through Verizon (thus far). There will of course also be different editions based on the radios required for each different mobile carrier both here in the United States and abroad – and it’s looking like the end of March is going to be the delivery window on the whole – can’t wait!

[via BlackBerry]

This listing tipped with TMO News shows March the 27th to be a key date for T-Mobile, it being the home of every single one of the five listings included in this leak. Two different models of the Samsung T599 Galaxy Exhibit are listed with official date of reveal being set for the 20th of March. The first BlackBerry 10 all-touch device BlackBerry Z10 has been tipped for the same set of dates, releasing on the 27th.

The T-Mobile Sonic 2.0 Mobile HotSpot LTE has also been tipped for a March 20th reveal date and March 27th date of availability. The Samsung Galaxy S III LTE has also been tipped for a March 20th reveal date but a possibility of two different availability dates, one of them on the 27th, the other on the 3rd of April. Either way we’ve still got the hotspot appearing to be solid for the 27th, so we’ll keep confidence high for that date for launch.

How far the T-Mobile 4G LTE network will go in its infancy is no big secret – not more than a few major cities if we’re super lucky. It’s also been tipped that devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note II have 4G LTE capabilities with T-Mobile in their current state, lying dormant in wait for the strike. We’ll have to wait and see when the big day comes later this month to see how big this launch really will end up being!

[via Android Community]

Misek said that major UK carriers like EE, O2, and Orange are seeing high demand for the new handset, while Carphone Warehouse is actually experiencing “widespread sellouts.” He also claimed that sell-through rates could be as high as several hundred thousand in the UK, which is definitely a good sign for the struggling BlackBerry. Canada and UAE are two places where the phone is enjoying high pre-order numbers, though Misek didn’t talk specifics.

If Misek’s estimates are accurate, then the BlackBerry Z10 is off to an excellent start. Apparently, the white variant of the device is a bit more popular than the black variant, with the white ones in particular selling out at Carphone Warehouse. That doesn’t mean the black variant is unpopular, however, as that one is also experiencing limited stock in some places.

BlackBerry 10 is the company’s best shot at climbing out of the rut it’s worked itself into over the past few years. It used to be that BlackBerry phones were all the rage, but then Android and Apple came along to steal massive amounts of market share. Can this new OS and the Z10 help BlackBerry regain its former glory? It’s definitely a long shot, but things are looking good at this early stage. Stay tuned, and be sure to check out review of the BlackBerry Z1) to see what we thought of the device!

[via CNET]

Hardware and Design

Familiar and bland. The Z10 is a reasonably nondescript slab of black plastic and glass; as close to the sketched-in graphic of a “generic touchscreen phone” as you could imagine. BlackBerry was always keen to stress that the A and B versions of the Dev Alpha developer device were far from production-status, but bar a little aesthetic smoothing – the ridge around the display is gone, and the upper and lower front bezels are refined – this is the same identikit block as we’ve been seeing for months.

It’s not a bad design, per se, just an uninspired one. The plastic back cover – which tugs off with a fingernail’s snatch at the bottom edge, to reveal a long, thin battery compartment, micro SIM slot and microSD slot – has been given a soft-touch, dimpled finish reminiscent of a golf ball; it feels neither cheap nor premium, being merely easy to grip and reluctant to slide around tabletops. MicroUSB and micro HDMI ports sit snugly along the left edge (BlackBerry includes a USB cable and charger in the box, along with a wired stereo headset which plugs in on the top edge of the phone, but not a micro HDMI cable); on the right there are volume buttons flanking a center key that triggers voice control.

The power/lock button is on the top edge, next to a second microphone, the first being a small notch under the 4.2-inch, 1280 x 768 resolution LCD touchscreen. It’s a bright panel with accurate colours, and the size and resolution balance do a fine job for smooth text. A front-facing 2-megapixel camera is above the display, along with proximity and ambient light sensors, while an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash is on the back. Shiny BlackBerry branding front and back complete the picture; you don’t get a home button or any other fascia controls, with BlackBerry 10 dismissing them in favor of on-screen gestures.

Inside, it’s business pretty much as usual for a modern smartphone, with BlackBerry ticking most of the important boxes. The Z10 gets a 1.5GHz dualcore Qualcomm MSM8960 processor with a healthy 2GB of memory and 16GB of storage space (plus that microSD slot, of course, which is hot-swappable with up to 32GB cards), together with GPS, an accelerometer, digital compass, and a gyroscope.

Connectivity includes quadband LTE, quadband UMTS/HSPA+, and quadband GSM/EDGE, in addition to WiFi a/b/g/n. There’s also Bluetooth 4.0, as well as the ability to share the 4G connection with an integrated mobile hotspot feature.

Should BlackBerry have hurried the Q10, the Z10′s QWERTY-blessed cousin, out to the market first? There’s a good argument for that, BlackBerry being best-known for its physical keyboards, and while we had limited time with a non-final device at the BlackBerry 10 launch, our battering of the buttons nonetheless suggested that none of the RIM QWERTY goodness has been inadvertently thrown out with the name. An all-touch phone is perhaps better suited to the state of the smartphone market today, however; the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III, the current best-sellers, are both dominated by their touch interface, and while the BlackBerry faithful is crying out for physical keyboards, the company needs a broad audience if it wants to turn about its fortunes. Still, the combination of touch and QWERTY with the new OS leaves us eager to spend more time with the Q10 when it’s fully baked.

BlackBerry 10

BlackBerry describes BlackBerry 10 as its platform for the next decade. It’s also the OS it really could’ve done with for the past five years, as its portfolio of phones grew to look progressively more archaic in comparison to the iPhone’s simplicity and Android’s growing refinement. Getting it right out of the gate was perhaps the best decision BlackBerry could make, and while it came in for criticism in missing its 2012 launch goals, it at least avoids the stigma of being broken on day one.

So what’s new? Well, just about everything, at least to BlackBerry users. Whether you generously call it an homage, or think it’s plain copying, BlackBerry 10 cherry-picks several interface elements from other platforms we’ve seen over the past few years. So, there’s a task switcher with preview panes showing still-running apps, just like we had on MeeGo, and various gestures to navigate through without physical keys, as in webOS and MeeGo again.

Gestures and Multitasking

The gestures – which are walked through in a quick tutorial upon first boot – are straightforward. Swiping up, from the bottom edge of the display, takes you back to the task switcher; it also unlocks the phone, if the display isn’t active. Swiping down, from the top of the display, pulls out a contextual menu, the contents of which depend on what view you’re in. At the homescreen, for instance, there are toggles for Bluetooth, WiFi, screen rotation, and notifications, as well as shortcuts for the settings and the alarm; above it, there’s a status bar with battery, clock, WiFi, and network signal strength.

Swiping to the right on the homescreen, from the task switcher, takes you to the app launcher, a 4×4 grid of icons. As on other platforms, you can drag one icon onto another and create a folder, as well as long-press and hit the trash icon to uninstall apps. A row of squares under the grid show how far through the launcher you are, and you can tap them to jump back, while at the bottom there are fixed icons for phone, search, and camera. Searches go through contacts, messages, calendar, web history, and apps by default – though you can narrow things down with filters – and third-party apps can hook into the search system so that their results are included too.

Up to eight apps can be kept “live” on the task switcher at any one time; BlackBerry 10 will automatically close the oldest, or you can manually shut them down by hitting the “X” icon. The theory is that, even when minimized in the task switcher, the app is still active: BlackBerry calls this an “Active Frame” which basically means the app is free to feed certain information to you, such as calendar reminders and the current weather, though you don’t necessarily get a tiny thumbnail of the full functionality of the software. Of course, even if an app isn’t running – either full-screen or in Active Frame form – you still get its notifications in the Hub.

BlackBerry Hub and “Peek”

Swipe to the left of the task switcher and you find the unified inbox, now called BlackBerry Hub. It’s a catch-all for every notification – email, alerts, BBM and text messages, Facebook and Twitter messages, and calls – though you can pull out a menu by swiping to the left again and pick one specific category. Swipe down a little on the list, and you’ll see your next few calendar entries.

However, BlackBerry 10 doesn’t expect you to necessarily do all that swiping to get to new alerts. Instead there’s “peek”, a way to catch a glimpse of notifications from wherever you are in the system. Drag your finger partway up from the bottom of the display, and it zooms out slightly to show a row of notification icons; keep swiping, pulling the screen over to the right, and you expose the Hub. You then have the choice of pulling all the way to fully bring up the inbox, or let go and spring back to what you were doing before.

Peek is one of those features that, initially, makes perfect sense: stop leaping from app to app when a notification comes in, and instead – with a half-swipe of your finger – grab a glimpse of what’s new. After a short while of actually using the Z10, however – especially if you’ve come to BlackBerry 10 from iOS or Android – it makes less sense. On the other platforms, when you get a new email, or Twitter notification, or text message, a banner at the top of the display notifies you and gives you a preview of the content; you can then tap it to open it fully, or ignore it.

With BlackBerry 10, though, the notification system is stretched out into several, arguably unnecessary stages. First the blinking red light, though no on-screen notification, even if you’re using the phone at the time; then the half-swipe to “peek” at the list of notification icons, which tell you whether you have a new email, or message, or something else. That’s all they say, though – if you want to actually see what the content is, you need to keep swiping to expose the unified inbox preview.

It’s all very smooth, but it feels unnecessarily protracted. Not once in using the Z10 did we peek at the notification icons and then think “I’ll leave it at that”: every time we swiped into the inbox to see exactly what sort of content was new. BlackBerry argues that existing notification systems are distracting, forcing you to pay attention to new alerts as they come in, but we found that its alternative – a blinking red light and nothing else – had more of a Pavlovian response to make us check the inbox than iOS and Android’s snippets ever did.

Once you’re there, triaging messages can get a little confusing. Pressing and holding on an item in the list pulls in a context menu from the right side, sliding in with a neat animation; unfortunately, while it arguably then makes sense to let you swipe the menu in by sliding a finger right to left across the message, in fact that will just take you back to the task switcher. We also got stung a couple of times by some icon jumping: usually in the hub, there’s a context menu button (which allows you to jump to the top or bottom of the list, to search, compose, multi-select, refresh, or leap into the settings) in the bottom right hand corner, but that switches places with the delete button when you pull out the message-specific menu. More than once we almost deleted a message by stabbing to where the context menu key had been, but instead inadvertently hitting delete.

Keyboard

Actually replying to messages is a solid experience, even without the traditional BlackBerry physical keyboard to rely upon. The new on-screen keyboard is another point of pride for the company, though given it had waxed similarly lyrical about the much-maligned Storm series, many were wary. Happily, a clever auto-prediction and correction system steps in to save the day.

A sensible layout kicks things off, with a well-spaced four row layout that finds room for a broad spacebar. A swipe down from the upper edge of the ‘board switches to the number/symbol view, with a toggle button to flick between two pages of options. The period doubles – with a long press – as a voice dictation trigger, which requires an internet connection for server-side processing (just as with Google and Apple’s systems) and turned out to be reasonably accurate as long as there wasn’t too much background noise.

Start typing, however, and BlackBerry 10 begins suggesting the word it believes you’re aiming for. That’s nothing new, but BlackBerry has opted to float its suggestions over the next letter you’d be reaching for, whereupon rather than tap it you can swipe up to insert the full word. Since there are usually multiple word-complete options, at any one time you can have a cluster of words floating over the ‘board. Get it wrong and a swipe right to left deletes the whole word; a double-tap of the space bar punches in a period.

At first, it’s disconcerting. We’re accustomed to glancing above the top QWERTY row, as on other platforms, for suggestions, and so the constantly shifting UI of BlackBerry 10′s system takes some getting used to. After a period of use, however – which also gives the custom dictionary time to pick up some of your common words, as well as figure out what you’re more likely to be typing – we grew more familiar with it, and soon were punching out emails with alacrity. It’s helped by the fact that the keyboard doesn’t wait for you to begin the next word before it starts predicting: type “Hello, how” and “you” is already hovering there, among other options.

Browser

The browser doesn’t need to be sexy and innovative, it just needs to be fast and stable, and happily BlackBerry 10′s example seems to tick those boxes. WebKit based, with HTML5 and – switched off by default – Flash support, it did a solid job showing webpages, and will even prompt when there’s Flash content rather than force you to dig into the settings and enable it permanently. We did have some mixed results when dealing with mobile and full websites: BlackBerry 10 would opt to show us the mobile version of some sites, then the full versions of others, with no real indication of what that decision was based upon.

Searching is via Bing by default, though you can switch that to Google or Yahoo if you’d prefer, and there are auto-suggestions as you type in the URL/search bar at the bottom of the screen. A contextual menu gives options to share – BBM, Email, Facebook, NFC, and BBM Group are all offered, among others – as well as to switch to a pared-back “Reader” view with ads and other content stripped out. Both bookmarks and the option to pin a webpage shortcut to the homescreen are offered.

As for speed, it’s nippy but not the best browser we’ve seen. In SunSpider, the test of Javascript performance, the Z10 scored 1,847.0ms (lower is better); that’s slower than the Galaxy S III managed, back on its original firmware, and close to twice the time it took the iPhone 5 to complete.

BBM

BlackBerry Messenger has become a point of addiction for both BlackBerry’s enterprise and consumer users, and so it comes as no surprise that in BlackBerry 10 it’s had a makeover of sorts. In addition to the voice chat over WiFi feature added back in BBM 7, there’s now video chat, though all participants need to have a BlackBerry 10 device to use it.

Tap the green icon in the upper right hand corner of any IM window, and you get a choice of voice or video chat. The latter puts a small preview thumbnail of the view from your own camera in the bottom left corner, and has buttons for mute and to switch between the front and back cameras. There’s also a screen sharing key, which basically shows whoever you’re chatting with whatever is on your phone’s screen at the time.

BlackBerry positions it as ideal for presentations, but it’s also useful for sharing photo galleries or travel directions using BlackBerry Maps. It’s worth noting that, over cellular connections at least, the screen sharing resolution is lower than the Z10′s default, and things look a little fuzzy.

BlackBerry Maps

With BlackBerry cutting a deal with TomTom to power its live traffic data, you’d be forgiven for expecting standalone-PND-quality navigation from BlackBerry 10. Unfortunately, the Z10 falls not only well short of that, but pales in comparison to Google Maps and Apple Maps.

It’s not so much in the range of features offered – indeed BlackBerry Maps ticks most of the significant boxes, like 2D and 3D views, vector-based graphics for swifter, more data-efficient loading, and voice prompted turn-by-turn navigation – but in how they all actually work. In short: badly.

There’s no offline mode, even when you’ve begun navigating, so if you stumble out of data service (or go abroad and don’t have roaming turned on) you’re out of luck. BlackBerry credits TCS, the company behind Verizon’s VZ Navigator, for developing BlackBerry Maps especially for OS 10, while TomTom supplies the mapping data, points of interest, and traffic information; unfortunately, much of the time the app throws up the wrong location or confused POIs in response to searches. Meanwhile, even though there’s live traffic data, the navigation function doesn’t appear to call on it to figure out a better route.

Voice Control

Hold down the middle button on the side, and – after agreeing to BlackBerry doing some server-side processing – the Z10′s voice control system kicks in. There’s a similar array of features to what Apple’s Siri and Google’s voice control features offer: you can call a contact, or send them a message (by email, BBM, text, or Facebook), schedule an appointment or compose a note reminder to yourself. Log into Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and you can change your status there, and you can also search your device for apps or content, or the internet (using Bing) all by voice.

In practice, it works reasonably well, though it falls short of what Siri is offering. BlackBerry 10′s voice system is more literal: where Siri will figure out that your “husband” or “wife” is a person rather than a name, and clarify who exactly you mean the first time you ask to call or text them, BlackBerry 10 merely goes hunting for a contact called that. Ask for a simple conversion – what a mile is in kilometres, for instance – and BlackBerry 10 asks you if you want to search the internet for the answer; there’s no in-app result.

Of course, the good thing about server-based features like voice control is that BlackBerry can easily update them over time: eventually, your Z10 could figure out that when you ask “What’s on my agenda tomorrow?” you want an excerpt from your calendar, not to search Bing for that phrase. For the moment, though, it’s functional but basic.

BlackBerry World

There’s an app race on, but it’s more than just how many titles you have in your catalog. BlackBerry World – the renamed BlackBerry App World – comes populated not just with 70,000 apps for BlackBerry 10, the company is keen to point out, but with several of the most-popular “must haves” in place. That includes Angry Birds (including the latest Star Wars version), Facebook and Twitter, Skype, Amazon Kindle, FourSquare and WhatsApp, Box, and various enterprise-focused apps.

As we’ve seen with other platforms, though, a huge quantity of apps is little comfort if the title you particularly want or need is missing. Don’t bother looking for Netflix, or an official Tumblr app; there’s no Spotify or Pandora, nor Sonos; go hunting for Instagram and you’re out of luck. BlackBerry has been proactive in engaging – even encouraging with cash payouts – developers to port over their wares, but it faces the same uphill struggle as Windows Phone does: for every one “must have” app that arrives, there’s a dozen mediocre titles that do nothing but bulk out the overall count.

BlackBerry World is also the home to BlackBerry 10′s multimedia offerings, with a music download service powered by 7Digital and a TV/movie download/rental service from Rovi Corp. We had no problems buying an Alicia Keys album and downloading it straight to the Z10, where it was saved as a DRM-free MP3; the Music app shows album art and remembers your most recent tracks, and you can optionally enable track-skip by holding down the volume keys.

Movie and TV show purchases work in much the same way, though there’s no iCloud-style streaming option. Instead, you’ll need to download the whole thing to your phone before you can start watching. BlackBerry promises movie releases on the same day as their DVD counterparts hit stores, though time will tell if that pans out.

Blackberry Balance and Protect

BlackBerry 10 makes a big play for the consumer market, but that’s not to say BlackBerry has forgotten its enterprise roots. In fact, a key part of the company’s message is that today’s smartphones are invariably expected to do double-duty – to satisfy both business requirements and home needs – and that BlackBerry 10 is at the forefront of that balance.

The Z10, therefore, offers the appropriately named BlackBerry Balance, for those who expect their smartphone to be a beast of burden as well as a way to check Facebook in their downtime. In effect, it puts a firewall between your work data and your personal data: the former is accessible by your corporate systems administrator (indeed, your business will have to be running BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 in order to use BlackBerry Balance) and secured with 256-bit AES encryption, while the latter is yours alone.

Since flipping between work and personal could quickly become frustrating, BlackBerry allows for some degree of integration between the two environments. There’s only one task switcher, for instance: work apps get a tiny briefcase icon to show they’re running in the secured environment, and the Hub collates both personal and work messages (albeit locking the latter after a set period of time). Two BlackBerry World stores exist, with corporate administrators able to lock down the work store to certain apps.

Then there’s BlackBerry Safeguard, which for the most part doesn’t require a corporate infrastructure. BlackBerry includes everything from parental safeguards – locking down everything from app purchases, browser use, whether YouTube uploads are allowed, if Facebook or Twitter can be used, to whether incoming calls and texts are permitted generally or only from those contacts already stored to the phone – to comprehensive app permissions, plus the BlackBerry Protect remote management system.

Similar to “Find my iPhone” from Apple, BlackBerry Protect allows lost or stolen devices to be remotely locked or even wiped via a web interface. It’s possible to track the location of the handset, make it play a loud noise (very useful if it’s dropped down behind the couch cushions), and display an on-screen message, for instance advertising a reward for return. The web-based BlackBerry Protect interface will even show what sort of battery life is remaining on the phone. There’s no subscription fee for any of the Protect services, though your Z10 will of course need to have a data connection if you want to locate, lock, or wipe it.

Camera

8-megapixels on the back; 2-megapixels on the front. BlackBerry doesn’t stray too far from the smartphone-norm with its photography provisions, and as you might expect the Z10 puts in a pictorial showing that’s also pretty much par for the course. Up to 1080p Full HD video recording from the main camera, and up to 720p from the front camera, are supported too.

The camera app itself bears some mention, with BlackBerry making some different UI choices than, say, Google or Apple. There’s no actual shutter-release key to be found: instead tapping the display fires off a frame. You can drag the focus point around by swiping your finger across the screen, and use the pinch gesture to control the 5x digital zoom (3x when using the front camera).

A menu offers a choice of digital image stabilization and a burst mode which fires off shots for as long as you hold your finger down, while there are five scene modes: auto, action, whiteboard, night, and beach or snow. Pull down the easily-forgotten context menu with a swipe down from the top of the display, and you can choose whether to save shots to a memory card (if present) or the Z10′s internal storage. There’s also optional geotagging. Somewhat bizarrely, there’s no apparent way to change the resolution the Z10 captures images at: you’re stuck at the maximum resolution of each camera.

Video recording is similarly triggered by tapping anywhere on the screen to start and then stop; you can turn the LED light on during recording, but there’s no way to capture a still photo while shooting video, unlike on many recent Android phones. YouTube is one of the sharing options in the gallery, and once you’ve signed into your account, you can upload footage filmed on the Z10 directly to the internet. Unlike for stills, video recording offers a choice of quality settings, albeit only two: 1080p and 720p for the main camera.

With a single quality setting for stills, then, you’d be excused for expecting great things from the Z10′s camera. Unfortunately it’s a mixed bag, and while daylight shots are fair – albeit with a tendency to wash out in lighter parts of the frame – when light gets scarce things rapidly go downhill. Photos quickly acquire the sort of gloom that even Edgar Allan Poe might describe “a bit much”; blur is minimal, but you get lashings of noise and colors that skew toward the sepia.

BlackBerry is making a big deal out of its TimeShift feature in the Z10′s camera, though to be fair it’s based on licensed processing magic from Nokia-acquired Scalado. Origins aside, it’s a clever system: in TimeShift mode, the Z10 fires off multiple frames in rapid succession, then identifies any faces in the frame and allows you to cycle through the different expressions captured, piecing together a final image with the best of the bunch.

Take a photo and, after TimeShift has done its burst business, each identified face is framed by a colored square. Tapping that brings up a loupe which, by dragging a knob around the periphery, cycles through each of the different options. Closed eyes, skewed smiles, or blurred expressions can be cut out, and since each face can be processed independently, you end up with a single, master shot with everybody looking their best.

TimeShift isn’t the only image editing tool baked into BlackBerry 10. There are Instagram-style filters available in the Pictures app, and the same face-recognition system that spots people in TimeShift also flags up subjects for optional red-eye reduction. Crops, automatic color/brightness/contrast adjustment, and facial tone smoothing are also on offer.

As for video, like most front-facing cameras the 720p footage underwhelms, but the main camera produces reasonable clips. At 1080p, they’re decent if fed with enough light, but as brightness decreases so does video quality, and the LED light isn’t sufficiently powerful to give you anything but a Blair Witch effect to up-close subjects.

BlackBerry Z10 1080p video sample:

Video clips can be trimmed, as well as have brightness, contrast, color, and volume tweaked; however, BlackBerry 10 also includes the Story Maker app, a more comprehensive video editing tool. It’s similar to the video apps we’ve seen Samsung bundle on the Galaxy series: you can pick a combination of video clips and still images, combine them with music (either your own tracks, or from BlackBerry 10′s preloaded audio), and then add titles and credits. Themes – such as “chromatic”, “bleach bypass”, and “vintage”; think Instagram for video – can be added, and then the end results uploaded to YouTube.

Story Maker works, certainly, but just as per similar apps on other platforms, we’re still not convinced that video editing on a handset is ever going to take off. Far more useful is the ability to access the Z10 over WiFi. Turn the feature on, and the smartphone shows up on your network as a shared device, and we were able to use both Windows and Mac machines to browse the full file structure, including any microSD card that was loaded.

It makes pulling photos and videos off the Z10 particularly straightforward, though it’s worth noting that on a Mac we were able to access files without having to type in a password at any point (despite BlackBerry 10 prompting you to create one – each and every time you turn on WiFi access, no less – to secure the sharing). You’ll definitely want to turn the feature off when you’re away from your home network, just in case.

Phone and Battery

Tenacious but quiet. The Z10 showed BlackBerry’s usual zeal at clinging to a signal, while downloads over the LTE connection (using an EE SIM) were prompt. There’s no Speedtest app for BlackBerry 10 as yet, and the full website struggled to run in the browser, even with Flash turned on.

More troublesome was the surprisingly low volume from both the Z10′s earpiece and speaker. Call quality was generally solid, but we had to crank up the volume higher than we’d expect if there was background noise to contend with. The same proved true when trying to use the Z10 for an impromptu conference call, something which may give the BlackBerry faithful pause for thought.

The Z10′s long, narrow 1,800 mAh battery is smaller than what we’re used to seeing from modern smartphones, though BlackBerry still predicts up to 11hrs of 3G talk time or up to 408hrs of 3G standby from a full charge (alternatively, up to 60hrs of audio playback or up to 10hrs of video). In our experience, though, those targets are slightly too ambitious.

In typical use, with a single push email account turned on, plus Facebook and Twitter, some app downloads and photography, some browsing and map use, a little mixed media playback, a couple of calls, and some messaging (both SMS and BBM), the Z10 struggled to make it through the day on a single charge. Standby time is good – we left the Z10 off the charger overnight, and the battery gage had hardly moved by the morning – but actually make use of the phone and the juice starts flowing fast.

Unfortunately, unlike Android’s useful battery report page, which shows exactly how your power was consumed, BlackBerry 10 makes do with merely the small icon in the status bar and a percentage of power remaining in the settings. At least the Z10′s battery can be switched out; if we were BlackBerry, we’d consider bundling a second in the box, just to pre-empt business users’ complaints.

Price and Value

Rumor had it that BlackBerry would price the Z10 to move, following Nokia’s strategy at pitching the new phone well under the smartphone norm of $200-on-contract in recognition of its “plucky challenger” status. Unfortunately that’s not turned out to be the case, and when it arrives in the US this March it’ll be $199.99 with a new, two year agreement. In the UK, where the Z10 hit shelves on January 31 (albeit in black only; the white version isn’t expected until midway through February), you get the handset free on monthly plans of £36 ($57) or above, again presuming a two year contract. Canada comes next, with the Z10 priced at $149 on a three year contract and arriving in-stores on February 5.

That puts it on a par with the 16GB iPhone 5, HTC’s DROID DNA, and Samsung’s Galaxy S III (in the US at least; in the UK, you’ll save £10 a month if you opt for the Galaxy S III), and we’re not entirely convinced that either the Z10 or BlackBerry 10 deliver enough to make it entirely competitive. The value question gets all the more shaky when you consider the two markets BlackBerry is currently strong in: the enterprise and among teenagers.

Among business users, BlackBerry has faced growing competition from enterprise-level functionality in Android and iOS, and Microsoft has made a significant play for that segment in Windows Phone, pushing the seamless integration of mobile Office. Meanwhile, as the bring-your-own-device trend continues, it’s questionable as to how many of BlackBerry’s corporate customers will choose to outfit their workforce with a fleet of new Z10′s, rather than simply open up access to employees’ existing devices.

As for teens, lured to BlackBerry phones by virtue of cheap pre-pay deals and the ubiquity of BBM among their peer group, the Z10′s premium pricing isn’t going to fly. In fact, BlackBerry has already said it plans to keep BlackBerry 7, the old OS, around to cater for the low-end market; that’s sensible, when you consider pre-pay BlackBerry devices are often European carriers’ best-sellers (particularly during the holidays), but it does little to build out BlackBerry 10′s user-base.

Wrap-up

BlackBerry 10 is a huge step forward over the versions that came before it, that much is clear. It’s easier to use, looks better, is more consistent and understandable for new users, and sensibly implements touchscreen gestures rather than a spray of buttons under the display. BlackBerry Hub and its attempts to collate every notification and update may not be to everybody’s taste, but if your social life is spread across your phone, there’s a good argument for pulling everything together in one, easily-monitored place.

Unfortunately – and you just knew there’d be an “unfortunately” – a huge step isn’t enough to make BlackBerry 10 a must-have. Yes, BlackBerry has itself a good OS, but the mobile industry has more than its fair share of “promising but dead” platforms, each with clever ways of addressing smartphone complexity, and yet each failing along the way. As MeeGo and webOS demonstrated, you can have software with touches of genius but it may still end up in the graveyard.

BlackBerry could’ve swung it had the Z10 itself been a blockbuster device, but the sober black slab is relegated to little more than a frame to demonstrate BlackBerry 10. It feels neither cheap nor expensive in the hand, neither fast nor slow in use; its specifications tick the necessary boxes but go no further. That adds up to an absence of “must have” experiences: BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 are nice enough to use, but there’s nothing really to stop you from going back to iOS or Android and their well-stocked app stores.

If you’re a BlackBerry fan, then the Z10 (and, with its promise of a physical keyboard, the upcoming Q10) is undeniably a big step up from whatever you’re currently using. Sadly BlackBerry fans are now in short supply, in the grand scheme of the mobile market, and selling a shrinking group new phones does little to help the Canadian company break out of its doldrums. Thorsten Heins & Co. have done an admirable job dragging BlackBerry out of its bad old habits, but BlackBerry 10 still has a long way to go before it’s anything more than a reasonable alternative to Windows Phone in the smartphone little leagues.

The list of games created by Gameloft and here optimized and ready for play on BlackBerry 10 devices goes on with N.O.V.A. 3; Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, the shooter you simply must play one way or another – it’s also out for iOS and Android. Most of these games have already been released for iOS, Android, or both systems at once and have proven themselves to be winners above and beyond one platform – so it’s time to keep the force strong with BlackBerry 10!

You’ll also find Shark Dash, Oregon Trail American Settler, Ice Age Village, and Real Soccer 2013 for you sports enthusiasts. Top-tier names like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises are also included on this ultimate list, bringing double-down brand power to the platform. You’ll find Let’s Golf! 3 on the list as well as Six Guns – that’s another shooter-type game in which you’re chilling in the old west with a variety of weapons and high-action battling abilities at your disposal.

Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour is one of the higher-end shooter games you’ll find on any platform, Gameloft bringing it to BlackBerry 10 right here at the dawn of its creation. Shark Dash, N.O.V.A. 3: Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, and UNO will be available first and immediately if not soon, while the rest of the list will be unleashed in the coming weeks. Also last but not least, and also coming out with the launch of BlackBerry 10 right at the beginning is none other than Asphalt 7: Heat – the most beastly racing game in modern times – for mobile, that is.

BlackBerry Mini Stereo Speaker

The Bluetooth speaker you’re seeing here is not made to be hinged entirely on the success of the Z10, as it connects with Bluetooth to any device you’ve got handy. Being able to work with BlackBerry software for conference calls with its own microphone input and loudspeaker output will be fabulous for your future teleconference needs. This beast will be costing you MSRP $100 USD and has a unique shape made to clip on to the many belts in your life – seatbelt, messenger bag belt, or to simply sit on your desk quietly.

BlackBerry Z10 Battery Charger Bundle

The Battery Charger Bundle is a machine that’s made to be as sleek as possible in surrounding the Z10 unit specifically. You’ll be working with a spare battery that’s made for the Z10 which you can charge while you’re on the go, switching this and your primary battery out in the middle of the day or whenever you have the need to do so. With this simple accessory you’ll never again be without battery life. The Battery Charger Bundle will run you a mere $50 USD MSRP and will be available right around the same time as the Z10 hits stores across the USA and abroad.

Pocket, Transform Shall, Flip Shell, and Holster cases

The main case you’re seeing here is the Flip Shell, a fabulous horizontally flipping back cover for the Z10 that’ll have you sitting up with ease. The Holster and Pocket cases you’ll be seeing soon have magnets that turn the display off on the Z10 when they’re closed (or you slip the device inside, that is), and the whole lot will cost you between $30 and $40 USD each. The Shells will cost $35 USD each and the whole bunch will be hitting shelves right around the same time as the Z10 itself – can’t wait!

This machine works with 2GB of RAM under the hood and a lovely 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor to keep you running powerfully into the night. The battery inside this device is 1800mAh strong and is removable and replaceable so you’ll be able to purchase extras for long no-power trips. Internal storage adds up to 16GB while you’ve also got a microSD storage slot for up to 32GB cards at a time.

The front-facing camera on this device is 2 megapixels strong and made for video chat while the back has an 8 megapixel shooter with singe LED flash. Bluetooth 4.0 is included inside as is wi-fi and NFC. The full unit weighs in at 4.8 ounces, that being a bit more than the iPhone 5 (4 ounces) and less than most of the main competitors in the field.

As you’ll be able to see in the photos here and the hands-on video above, the BlackBerry 10 operating system is based on gestures rather than home-buttons where each of the major mobile OS brands in the world rely on at least one central unit. Instead of said button, the BlackBerry Z10 has a rather pure-looking front facade with several physical buttons around its edges.

This machine feels light to the touch but but not so light its uncomfortable, its touchscreen is as responsive (if not more responsive) than the leading touch-sensitive smartphones across the market today, and the software appears swift. We’ll be reviewing this device in full rather soon – until then, have a peek at the hands-on photos (and video immediately if not soon) and let us know if you’ll be picking up the Z10 in the near future!

If you’re looking at the review posted by Engadget you’ll find that Tim Stevens (with contributions from Zach Honig and Edgar Alvarez) spoke highly of the operating system once it was up and running. Noting that BlackBerry has made it clear that they want their brand to reflect the speed of the experience as “Keeping You Moving”, the final product “needs to be very quick to respond.” Luckily by their measure, “most apps apps launch promptly and, once launched, are snappy and responsive.” Unfortunately the boot-up time appares to be taking more than a minute “after the battery is removed” and up to 30 seconds to shut down – not all that positive!

Over at CNET it would appear that Jessica Dolcourt has positive things to say about the user interface as well as the camera, noting that it appears that while the device may not be able to draw users away from the iPhone or Android easily, BlackBerry users will be pleased with the experience. While the camera does improve on previous BlackBerry models, it would appear that, according to Dolcourt, “Despite the thin toolset, image quality was pretty decent.” She also notes that users should skip the device entirely if they “have no patience to learn a new UI.”

With AllThingsD you’ll find the Walt Mossberg review with a rather simple bottom line: “I believe it [the BlackBerry Z10] has a chance of getting RIM back into the game, if the company can attract a lot more apps.” That’s a “radical” reinvention of BlackBerry, he notes, but there’s no surprisingly fabulous features that stand out as above and beyond the competition.

Reviewer Kevin Michaluk from CrackBerry notes that the Z10 is “more than a bare-bones 1.0″ product, making sure to mention that BlackBerry 10 has “evolved dramatically in all directions” in the time between his first look in the summer of 2012 and now. The CrackBerry review makes no effort to hide that it’s more of an exploration of the device and the software than it is a simple review and judgement of said products, tending to hardcore BlackBerry users first – for them they add that the software “addresses basically every nagging issue we’ve ever had with the legacy BlackBerry OS.”

The general word from Joshua Topolsky from The Verge was that unless you’re specifically interested in supporting BlackBerry for your own love of the brand, the Z10 is the smartphone for you. On the other hand, the review makes it simple once again: “there are better phones on the market, and I don’t yet see a compelling reason for most customers to choose this phone over those better ones.” A review from TechRadar by John McCann gives some insight on the physical makeup of the smartphone, noting the weight specifically to be a “happy medium” between the Lumia 920 (“nowhere near as heavy”) and the iPhone 5 (“not as feather light”).

Then there’s the ABC News Tech This Out review from Joanna Stern who mentions that though “it’s not a beautiful or elegant phone” it’s still “well-made and comfortable to hold.” She also speaks highly of the speed of the device, noting that, “it gives even the best Android phones and the iPhone 5 a run for their money in terms of speed.” Sound like a win to you?

We’ll be keeping our ear to the wire for user reactions galore when this device is released around the world in the next few months, so stay tuned. Have a peek at the timeline below for more news surrounding the release of BlackBerry 10 as well as the BlackBerry Z10 and the keyboard-toting BlackBerry Q10 as well. Will you be joining (or re-joining) the BlackBerry pack this season? Let us know!

The back of the device works with a three-dimensional glass-weave structure that makes the feel of the device wholly unique. The keypad is the widest that the company has ever delivered, and the AMOLED display is what the company calls their “best yet” for brightness and excellence in delivering the content you’ll be working with in BlackBerry 10. WIth a dual-core processor under the hood and the largest battery inside that the company has ever put in a BlackBerry smartphone, you’ll also be rolling out with high power all day long.

This machine will be delivering the first full BlackBerry 10 experience with the classic keyboard and touchscreen at once in the world. While the final details will be revealed soon (stay tuned to this post and our upcoming hands-on as well), you’ll do well to check out our timeline below as well as SlashGear’s lovely BlackBerry 10 tag hub. This experience is one of two that BlackBerry needs to key in on as perfect – it’s all or nothing right here in the first part of 2013!

Note in the timeline below that RIM has re-branded themselves as BlackBerry and BlackBerry alone as well, this solidifying the message for the world and showing us that they mean business with both BlackBerry software and hardware from this point forward. Also keep an eye on the CEO of BlackBerry this week as he continues to champion the platform now that it’s out in the wild, and let us know if you’re planning on working with the full-touch Z10, the touch/keyboard experience of the Q10, or if you’ll be waiting for the next generation of BlackBerry 10 devices after this!