Slicker Than Your Average: The BlackBerry Q10 Review

BlackBerry is keen to keep up the premium appeal of its first BlackBerry 10 handsets. It is a huge step forwards for BlackBerry, bringing its devices up to speed with the likes of iOS 6, Android Jelly Bean and Windows Phone 8. The BlackBerry Q10 is the first BlackBerry 10 smart phone to feature a classic BlackBerry hardware physical QWERTY keyboard. This device combines the iconic BlackBerry keyboard and the power of the BlackBerry 10 platform to bring you to a totally different experience. With the BlackBerry Hub feature on the Q10 you can swipe in and out of your social network updates without closing the apps you have opened. You can see everything at a glance and won’t have to drop everything, choose to reply or let the screen snap back if it can wait. The keyboard is bigger and better; you can type effortlessly with the classic BlackBerry keyboard. The phone is engineered with clever predictive text, offering a more visual appeal, helping to eliminate errors while typing on the go. The elegant QWERTY keyboard together with a touch screen means you’ll be able to get to the things you need with ease. The metal frets between the keys are also bigger, A single silver fret – reminiscent of the ones separating the keys on the front of the Q10 – runs horizontally across the back of the handset, elevating the 8MP camera lens (and single LED flash) from the surface you place it on, in a bid to avoid scratches. With Screen Share on BBM you can share whatever’s on your phone –be it your holiday pictures, Video clips, games, or even your meeting notes. This time-saving feature is essentially a shortcut that allows you to send messages faster than ever before. It’s easy to switch from text to video – all you need to do is tap the screen to catch up face-to-face with BBM Video. Better shortcuts with Type and Go. The design is meticulous, light and durable. The back plate on the BlackBerry Q10 is made of a unique glass-weave material that is lighter and stronger than plastic. The device is surrounded by a machined stainless steel frame with a durable black coating, which is designed to prevent the edges from chipping and keeps your BlackBerry Q10 looking good.  The casing can be removed by simply sliding it down, to give you access to the battery, micro SIM, micro SD port capable of handling cards up to 32GB in size – which complements the 16GB of internal storage (of which 10.5GB is actually available to you).  The BlackBerry Q10 has the largest battery of any BlackBerry smart phone, ever. The BlackBerry Q10 battery is a Li-lon 2100 mAh in size, which means, well, you can talk, work and play nearly all day on a single charge. The BlackBerry Q10 is a BlackBerry 10 device, and it performs like one. The BlackBerry Q10 was designed to offer amazing performance available on BlackBerry 10 devices. BlackBerry has continued with its dual port offering on the left of its BlackBerry 10 devices with both micro USB and micro HDMI slots situated together allowing for an easy link up to a computer, TV or even a projector. BlackBerry has implemented a pull down quick settings bar, accessed by dragging your finger down from the top of the screen, which apes similar implementation found on some Android handsets. The BlackBerry Balance functionality that comes along with the Q10 is good news for business user or company owner. BlackBerry Balance provides you with two separate areas of the phone – one for business (and can be controlled by your company) and one for personal use where you’ll have free rein over the apps and content. However with the BB 10.1 upgrade, which has also seen the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) updated to the same level, companies can now completely lock down entire handsets if they feel employees will be carrying highly sensitive information on their mobile device. The BlackBerry Q10 has a BlackBerry Remember, which you can use to create a scrap book to collect relevant photos, lists, messages, emails and web links, all in one place. The BlackBerry Q10 allows you to draw in contacts from a variety of fields including Google, BBM, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and various other email accounts. All congregate in the Contacts app with profile pictures readily pulled through from social networking sites to provide a bit of colour in the otherwise white on black setup. BASIC SPECIFICATION Dimensions     119.6 x 66.8 x 10.4 mm (4.71 x 2.63 x 0.41 in) Size- 720 x 720 pixels, 3.1 inches (~ 328 ppi pixel densities) Internal-16 GB storage, 2 GB RAM Camera -8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash OS-BlackBerry 10 OS CPU-Dual-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A9 GPU-Power VR SGX544 Java-Yes, MIDP 2.1 Colour –Black, White The 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM inside the BlackBerry Q10 provide more than enough power for day to day tasks. The Black Berry Q10 is not just any other phone, it is slicker than your imagination.