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JuRy sTill ouT on bb10the much-antIcIpated blackberry 10 Is fInally on the shelves In doha. the smartphone company formerly known as rIm released It In sIx dIfferent cItIes across the world on January 30, and rory Coen was lucky enough to be present at the regIonal launch In dubaI. so what were hIs fIrst ImpressIons of the new devIce?

getting a new phone can be quite a stressful or-deal. It’s never fluid and seamless, that’s for sure. In fact, after 12 years of experiencing various handheld devices, I can now say that the average person goes through seven distinct phases after acquiring a new smartphone. I know I do, any-

way, and I’m pretty average. Let’s analyse these steps through the lens of my new BlackBerry Z10.

1. Excitement: Who isn’t excited to get a new phone, be it smart or dumb. I had been using the BlackBerry Curve – a fantastic piece of kit, by the way – for the best part of a year before I was invited to try the new BlackBerry Z10. This model is of course the touch-screen – the Q10 has the physical keyboard but hasn’t been released onto the market yet. The Q10 was the one I wanted, but they gave me the Z10. I heard stories of faster Internet speeds, more fluid navigation between the applications, an innovative “hub” where I would control all my ap-plications for one menu. I was terribly excited.

2. Confusion:When you turn on your new phone for the first time, everything confuses you. “What’s this for?”, “Why would I want to do that?”, “Where’s this application, where’s that application?”. It’s a night-mare. “Why are they making smaller SIM cards?”, “Why do I need to register for this?”, “What’s Development Mode?”, “How do I transfer my contacts from my old phone to this one?”. The list is endless – it’s goes on until infinity. You’re straight onto the Inter-

net reading reviews – putting “BlackBerry 10 useless” into Google to see what comes out. What’s worse is that the BlackBerry officials told us at the launch that What’s App would be in the BlackBerry World app store, so you can understand my confusion when I saw that it in fact was not.

3. Disappointment:So when you don’t fully come out of your confused state, you tran-sition pretty swiftly into Phase 3. You’re in shock. You’re so disap-pointed with this new acquisition. It was supposed to be your new best friend. It was supposed to solve all the problems with your old phone. It was to be quicker and more reliable. You can’t get used to the new touch-screen keypad. It’s taking forever to write one sim-ple sentence, which you would have written in two seconds on the old phone. You’re having to remember passwords that were saved on your old phone. Your Internet is constantly dropping and you don’t know why.

4. Denial:You’re afraid to tell any of your friends and family that you made a big mistake. You keep telling them that the BlackBerry 10 is all it cracked up to be – it’s much better than its immediate competitors. “So why aren’t my messages going through?” asks your friend. “I’m experiencing a couple of networking issues, a few teething prob-lems. But you should see how slick and fluid it is going between the apps. It’s a great phone.” Meanwhile, you’re back on Google filtering through more and more reviews hoping other people are experi-encing the same issues as you.

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5. Regret:You cave in and decide to go back to your old phone – the place “where every- body knows your name”, but your SIM doesn’t fit it anymore. You haven’t been in contact with your friends on instant messenger for a couple of days now. You would give up food for a week to retrieve the old situation.

6. Reconciliation:You eventually concede that you need to give the phone time. It’s quite possible that the phone is as confused as you are and you both need to get to know each other before you can have a harmonious relationship. BlackBerry says that the keypad will eventually get to know your favourite words and nuances and will help you to type faster if you give it time. Maybe there are some better applications that can replace my old ones.

7. Delight and contentment:After some days, you eventually get to where you want to be. Your favourite apps are all on your home screen. You are typing as fast, if not faster, than on your previous phone. You’re able to download new apps in a fraction of the old time. You can have multiple apps open at the same time, instead of having to close down one and open another. You are flipping between these apps like you are turning pages on a newspaper.

Having had the phone for just over a week now, I am struggling through Phase 6 at the moment. But, there are some excellent fea-tures that tickle my fancy. The Internet browser is a dream to use. It’s fast and produces neat text. The hub is a great idea; it aggregates all your messages and notifications – e-mail, SMS, BBM, Facebook, Google Chat, LinkedIn and Twitter – into one generator, but it also allows you to see each application independently of any other. I am disappointed that What’s App isn’t included in the package. This was a programme which I used quite frequently with my friends

and family back home. I am assuming it will become available in the coming weeks, however.

The Z10’s predictive typing is pretty innovative, though. As you type, small word suggestions appear over the top of the keys. It makes general suggestions for conjunctions and such when you’re between words, but it will continue to make suggestions as you progress through words: typing H, for instance, could make “how” appear over the U key, “had” appear over the R key, or “has” appear over the N key, and so on.

The camera is another feature I enjoyed. I took a picture, just tipping my finger against the screen, at the Corniche recently, and I was able to save the image in one of four different artistic styles: black and white, lomo, antique or sepia. The antique, my favourite, makes your image look like it was taken thirty years ago. You can rotate, crop and enhance it before easily uploading the edited image to the Internet.

It’s hard to write about the battery life of any of these smart-phones without complaining, but I guess we’re all used to having to charge our phones twice a day now. I get the feeling the Z10 bat-tery is a little bit stronger than the one on the Curve, but I haven’t been pounding away on What’s App on this one, so it’s difficult to compare just ye.

The BlackBerry World app store now includes 70,000 Black-Berry 10 apps. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare apps for BlackBerry 10 are preinstalled, while customers will also have access to leading application providers such as Disney, Cisco and Rovio. I wasn’t able to find Skype in the app store, even though this was also promised

SpecS at a glance: BlackBerry Z10

screen1280x768 4.2” (356 ppi) iPs touchscreen

os blackberry 10

cpudual-core 1.5ghz Qualcomm snapdragon s4 Plus

ram 2gb

gpu Qualcomm Adreno 225

storage16gb nAnd flash, expandable via microsd

netWorkIng 802.11a/b/g/n, bluetooth 4.0, nFC

portsmicro usb, micro hdmi, headphones

camera8.0mP rear camera, 2mP front camera

sIze5.12” x 2.58” x 0.35” (130 x 65.6 x 9 mm)

WeIgHt 4.78oz (135.4 g)

battery 1800 mAh

startIng prIce Qr2,599

sensor Ambient light sensor, gPs

otHer perksPower adapter, case, screen cleaner

tHorsten HeIns, CeO, blACkberry