Jackson Jambalaya

Karl Denninger of The Market Ticker got his hands on the new Blackberry Z10 and tried it out.  Here is what he had to say about the device:

"Verdict: Best "new smartphone experience" I've ever had, bar none, period. Sorry Samsung and Apple. Android loses to a phone with thought instead of a robot at its core."

Pros

*EXCEPTIONAL RF. Everything else is secondary if this isn't up to par; no signal is no signal and a crap signal destroys your user experience whether you're calling, browsing, or whatever. This phone has excellent RF quality and pulls signals much better than my Samsung SGS-II, which I considered to be in the "very good" category. You won't be unhappy with the RF performance. I keep "4g" signals indoors in places where my SGS-II drops back to EDGE. I've had good phones in this regard (most Samsungs and older HTC products), I've had so-so ones (the T-Mobile MDA and a few others) and I've had a couple of that are ridiculously good but MANY years ago (e.g. the original Nokia 3395, for example.) The Z10 is easily the equal of the best I've ever used and might be the best flat-out.

*Notifications. The iconic red LED on the front for notifications is something that I "gave up" with the Samsung devices and now having it back I realize how much I missed it. That's one of those things you don't think is a big deal until it's gone. Then you do.

*Bluetooth works correctly. There are no Android devices that do so in my experience. This phone does. If you care about bluetooth this is a sale-maker all on its own. You should care if you use your phone in your car or while active; this has been one of the sore spots with Android forever, particularly with the advanced headsets that do both voice calls and media. Incidentally, bluetooth media audio quality is excellent as well -- shockingly so. More on that next....

*Voice and audio quality. No complaints. It's loud enough and clear. If there's one place it's a bit marginal it's the speakerphone, but I'm looking for complaints to say that. Audio quality for music is excellent and with a decent set of headphones it is also plenty loud. I have a pair of MDR-V150s that I like to wear when I want moderate isolation and decent quality (far better than most "earbuds" but definitely not "discreet"!) and the maximum volume gets every bit as loud as I want to listen to. Mercifully there are no gimmicky audio-processing toys included in the software. Thank you Blackberry for not ruining the audio quality with that crap that is all over your competitors products and universally sucks. What you hear is what's there and to add icing on the cake FLAC lossless files are supported in the media player. I have a pair of small monitors on my desk that are my "computer speakers" driven by an actual receiver and a pair of KEF 104/2s in the living room -- I'm a bit of an audio snob. This phone delivers as a music player for those who care about their music.

*The keyboard. Best I've ever used. Period. Nothing else comes close. It's fast, it's accurate, it's what Android wishes it was. The iPhone's keypad is ok but this is better. It learns from you and has "virtual frets" on it, which I thought would make it harder to use accurately. Wrong again. The "flick" thing is cool as well. I didn't think they could improve on the Playbook's keyboard -- I was wrong, they did. If you think you want the Q10 try this and you may change your mind!

*The browser. My God, it works. It just works. Thank you Blackberry, you didn't break the exceptional user experience that was in the Playbook in this regard. I have FOUR browsers loaded on my Android device, all of which had niggles of various sorts. This has none. I just do what I want to do online and pages look like they do on my desktop. Exactly as it's supposed to be, exactly as we've been promised for years, and now you have it. If, and only if, you buy a Z10.

*Battery life. Preliminary indications are in the "oh my" category; I'm seeing real-world drain with push email enabled and all my usual stuff, including a trading app running in the background of somewhere around 3% an hour! Now yeah, that's light actual use, but this is unbelievable compared to what I'm used to across every other smartphone I've ever owned. We'll see if it holds up; my experience thus far is so good that I wonder if the calibration is right and I'm going to find myself with the meter going from 50% to zero in 15 minutes later today. I'll amend this if I'm banging the drum in a way that's undeserved, but if not and you care about battery life there is only one phone for you to buy in the smartphone universe, and it's this one. Update: Intentionally not plugging the phone in all day and trying fairly hard to kill it throughout the day failed; it still showed 35% when I retired last night. It looks like it really is as good as it first appeared.

*The Hub. I like it. A lot. It's clean, it works, the notifications are tunable, it's what Android and the iPhone wish they had. Android can "kinda" get there with its launchers, but it's not the same thing.

*HDMI. I consider this a "freebie" but it's a good freebie. I don't know how much I'll use it but the fact that it works instantly with no hassles and no adapters is a darn good sign. That it doesn't have to play with resolutions and recognizes a higher-resolution display unit (and does the right thing) matters too. (KF note: There is an HDMI jack on the phone that will connect directly with an HDMI cable to your tv or monitor.)

*Look-and-feel / ergonomics. The unit has a nice feel in the hand, neither too heavy or too light. It does not feel cheap anywhere, unlike the Samsungs that have a "plasticky" feel that is a bit cheap. You learn to overlook it on those phones but it's there. The back of the Z10 is a plastic with just enough texture and grip that it won't slide on the desk but not enough to hang it up on your pocket when sliding it in and the sides have just enough "grip" that you're not likely to drop it. Perfect. The only ergonomic complaint I have is that the charging jack is on the left side, but it's in a decent place and in most car-clips you can plug it in (it works in mine.) This is a trade-off as it means I can use the phone in my little $3 stand as an alarm clock (which it conveniently has pre-loaded and works nicely) while plugged in; with a bottom jack you can't. Like all phones you'll probably want a case of some sort; I'm going to get a TPU-material "slimline" one for impact protection.

Cons:

*MAYBE Apps. If you need something that's not there, you have a problem. But remember that you can link a page off the browser to the start screen, so the question is "need." If there's a real issue it's here. You are the only one who can judge that. (KF note: Android apps can be sideloaded. Click on the link to the post.)

*No "Select All" in the Hub or its subcomponents. That needs to be added.

*No paste capability into a password box. Inexcusable -- and easily fixed. Six loud bronx cheers in the direction of Waterloo on that one.

*No "never" screen timeout option and no separate AC profile. Again, what was Waterloo thinking? That needs a fix too, but like the paste functionality it's easy.

Blackberry needs to issue one quick software revision that fix these last three issues -- give us two profiles for power (screen timeout, etc) and in the AC one make "Never" a screen timeout option. Enable paste for all text entry boxes in applications, including password boxes. And make it possible to do a "select all" in the Hub's component pieces (e.g. for all pieces of email in a given email inbox.)

That's all I got for complaints, and guys and dolls -- that's not much.

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