BlackBerry Z10 review

The BlackBerry Z10 is the brand’s response to its critics, the flagshiphandset for the company’s all new BlackBerry 10 operating system

It should come as no surprise to you that the BlackBerry Z10 isn’t going to have a hard time winning over BlackBerry fans. It’s not like it had a hard act to follow, a year of limbo has left its followers with a collection of handsets that range from the excellent BlackBerry Bold 9900 to the less so BlackBerry Torch.

Of course whether they were excellent handsets or not mattered not as they were all running the dreaded BlackBerry 7.0, an OS that has become eclipsed by the constantly updated Android and iOS operating systems.

The Z10 hopes to change all that by combining the brand's superb hardware capabilities – the BlackBerry PlayBook was an excellent tablet crippled by its OS – with a smartphone OS that can finally compete with the likes of Google and Apple.

T3 managed to get a review sample of the phone a couple of days before the official launch - not really enough time for a full review, but here's what we thought about it.

BlackBerry Z10: Size and build

The BlackBerry Z10 measures in at 130 x 65.6 x 9mm making it around the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S2. The Z10 comes in black or white and features an all-plastic body with a slightly rubberised back then can be peeled off to gain access to battery, Micro SD card slot and Micro SIM slot.

Moving away from the glossy glamour of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the  iPhone 5 the Z10 has gone for a more subtle effect that actually it pulls off rather well. Learning from the PlayBook, BlackBerry has combined a matte-effect sturdiness with a level of build quality that reminds you this is its flagship model.

BlackBerry Z10: Features

Under the hood there’s a dual-core 1.5GHz processor along with an impressive 2GB of RAM. There’s 16GB of internal memory with a Micro SD card slot that can be bumped up to 32GB.

One of the key features of the Z10 is the lack of buttons on the front of the handset, everything is done through swiping from off-screen using BlackBerry’s new ‘Peek and Flow’ OS.