I had the opportunity to watch the live video stream of the Blackberry Z10 launch today. Thought I would let you know what I thought.
I like it.
Blackberry has introduced some new features with the Z10 which seem to be quite creative.
Here's some of the new features:
- Blackberry Hub - This is sort of a home base for all of your important apps, and social media. All are running in real time, and by swiping your thumb, you can see any one of them and switch to it. You can also see a list of the most recent items that have come in (twitter feeds, emails, text messages etc).
- Texting - BB has a "flick"feature where you can touch a letter and flick a word up into your chat. This would make sentences faster to type, and easier when you are on the move. BB has also added a translation feature for the texting, where you can translate what you typed into a number of other languages almost instantly.
- Blackberry Balance - You can switch between a "Work" and "Personal" section of your Z10. This means you can isolate apps that are only personal or work related in their respective sections. This will make having a work phone, and a personal phone unnecessary going forward.
- Blackberry Messenger - Blackberry has turbo-boosted their BB Messenger by adding a video chat feature, and something called Screenshare. Video Chat is pretty self-explanatory. Screenshare allows you to share your entire screen with the person you are video chatting with. I like that feature a lot.
- Blackberry Remember - This is kind of like a a bookmark tool and calendar all in one. Create folders, store items, and easily turn anything you're looking at into something you need to "remember" at a later time.
- Camera - The BB camera now has it's own effects section built in, and will allow you to edit photos to crop/tilt and save them once completed.
- Storymaker - This one is pretty cool. You can select any number of photos, videos, songs etc. Then Storymaker will merge them together into a multimedia presentation. Looks like a lot of fun. Remember all those wedding videos the Maid of Honor put together to show the happy couple over the years? Well this can accomplish that task in minutes. I can see this feature being very useful to people.
Blackberry also announced Alicia Keys as their new Creative Director. She came out and told her story of how she used to date Blackberry, then broke up, and now is back. She seemed very excited to be part of the company. Time will tell how she makes out in her new role.
Blackberry also mentioned it already has over 70,000 apps for the new Z10. It has apps like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Linkedin , Kindle, Skype etc. And it's got Angry Birds of course. Plus it has the 8 major movie studios on board with content. And it has all of the major music labels on board.
My first cell phone was a Blackberry Pearl back in 2007. I thought it was awesome! But compared to cell phones today, it was a brick.
I like the Z10, and Blackberry is also comeing out later this year with the Q10 - which will have the classic BB keyboard for thos who still love the tactile version.
Here are the Specs for the Z10:
2.58 inches wide, 5.1 inches long, 0.35 inches thick
10 Hour Talk Time
Weight - 135 grams (just under 5 ounces)
Display: 4.2", 4 point multi-touch LCD display, 1280x768 resolution at 356 PPI
Software: Blackberry 10 OS
Memory: 2 GB RAM, 16 GB Flash, Hot Swappable MicroSD slot (up to 32 GB)
Processor: Dual Core 1.5 GHz
It also has 4G LTE, WIFI 4G Mobile Hotspot, GPS, Rear 8 MP Auto Focus Camera (5x zoom 1080p HD video), Front 2 MP camera (3x zoom 720p HD video), Bluetooth 4.0
In addition, it has Micro USB Slot, Micro HDMI Slot, NFC Antenna, Headphone Jack, Power/Standby Button, Microphone, Phone Speaker, Sensor Array, Notofication LED, Speaker Port, Pause/Play/Voice Control, Volume/Track Control.
You can watch the whole hour and a half video of the Blackberry Z10 launch at the following link:
Z10 Launch
Now, as a competitor of Blackberry, Samsung has come out with an OLED display phone......which is flexible! Crazy! Check out their short video here:
And not to seem outdone, Nokia also has a prototype called the Kinetic which is also a flexible phone coming soon.
That's all for now.
Laterz.
