BlackBerry Q10 Review

By Rob Boggan

Too little too late. That’s the general consensus anytime BlackBerry is brought up in a conversation about tech and smartphones. Most people feel that maybe RIM rested on their laurels for too long, and are now forced to play catch up, or risk getting lost in the shuffle. RIM seen marginal success with their new BlackBerry 10 OS, and the subsequent release of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. The Z10 has been garnering pretty solid reviews, but the device that everyone has been whispering about is the highly anticipated Q10. The Q10 represents a return to form for RIM and more importantly BlackBerry devices, with it’s classic Bold-esque body and familiar looking keyboard layout. Will the Q10 garner more attention than its touch screen counterpart, or will it simply be another swing and a miss by the boys in Waterloo?

Let’s start with my absolute favorite part of this device: The design. From front to back, I could tell there was a lot of thought put into the design and design quality of the Q10. In fact, this is the best built Blackberry I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. Even though the Q10 is remarkably thin, it doesn’t feel cheap, or poorly assembled, and has a great feeling, soft touch finish. The size of the device is about perfect for a BlackBerry, and one handed use is crazy easy, thanks to the size. Being as lightweight as it is, the Q10 was a breeze to slip in and out of my pocket and really made me miss the era when phones were normally made that size.

On the front of the device lies the gorgeous, responsive, and wildly familiar QWERTY keyboard. The biggest thing about being a former BlackBerry user, is even when you step away from those devices, and you get back into one with the full keyboard, you always miss it. BlackBerry phones built a reputation for having the best keyboards on a mobile device, and I’m glad they haven’t lost their luster in that area. Being used to using monstrous (by comparison) screens on my Android devices, the 3.1″  Super AMOLED screen on the Q10 was a bit of a bummer. I found myself actually squinting a few times while trying to read tweets and status updates and I’d imagine anyone with a smartphone that has a bigger screen would struggle to adjust to the display on the Q10. Outside of that, the display itself is pretty good, and it rocks a pixel density of 330 ppi, or 720p HD. There wasn’t so much an issue of colors being washed out, but some colors (like blue, black, or purple) seemed overly exaggerated, and let to some pretty funky colors being projected on the display.

The Q10 sports some pretty decent, albeit standard smartphone hardware. Powered by a dual core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of RAM, the phone was snappy and I didn’t have any issue with lag or slowdown. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the device had 16GB of internal storage, but I also thought that was a bit generous for a BlackBerry device. RIM opted to go with an 8MP camera for the main shooter on the Q10, and although it’s not the best camera in the world, it’s far from the worst. Most of the pictures I took turned out pretty decent, but in the middle of the day with direct sunlight involved, the camera had an issue with overcompensating and in the end, producing very noisy, very washed out pics. The front facing camera has a resolution of 2MP, and is capable of recording video in up to 720p. Video was more of the same, but with one redeeming quality, and that was stabilization. Catching my 4 year old run around the house normally causes cell phone video recordings to have a bit of blur or loss of focus, but the Q10 kept focus, frame by frame and actually produced really solid video clips.

One of my biggest pet peeves from the Z10, was the absolutely abysmal battery life. Literally would die even if i WASN’T using the device. I’m glad to report that the Q10 doesn’t suffer from that issue and actually has a really good battery inside. Even though it’s only a 2100 mAh battery, I could easily get through a full day of use and well into the next before I’d need to charge it. In a nutshell, power users will love the battery. Backed by Verizon’s 4G LTE data network, Internet speeds were not only fast, but consistent as well. Phone calls were crystal clear, and the speakerphone on the Q10 worked like a charm.

The Q10 is THE BlackBerry to have if you’re going to buy one. Unfortunately, the BlackBerry platform is almost instantly crippled by a lack of developer support, and in turn, a lack of app availability. What it lacks in third party apps though, it more than makes up for in it’s proprietary apps. BBM is still probably the best data messaging service available and laid the groundwork for things like iMessage, KiK, and WhatsApp, to even exist.The push email service is still second to none, and the BlackBerry security suite is top notch. Had BlackBerry not refused to move to more radical software and hardware in the past, who knows where they’d be today. The problem is they did, and now, they may be faced with the dire consequences of making too little too late hardware and software revisions.