Blackberry Z10 Unboxing
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,079 words · ~15 min read
0:00
this video is brought to you by coolermaster mobile featuring The Jazz
0:03
Pro notebook stand check it out at mobile. coolermaster usa.com welcome to
0:08
my unboxing and first look at the Blackberry zed1 so I'm going to open
0:12
this up with saying a big thanks to Bell Mobility here in Canada for providing me
0:16
with a Blackberry Zed 10 because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to
0:19
get my hands on this phone and as a Canadian I am extremely excited about
0:23
the Z 10 because it is one of those sort of you know you know Canadian company
0:29
not formerly Rim now Blackberry it's just kind of their their their last big
0:33
sort of kick at the Ken with Blackberry 10 and I'm really really excited to try
0:37
it out but the funny thing about trying it out is that I'm not actually going to
0:40
be the one trying it out doing our I switched 30-day trial with Blackberry 10
0:45
um is actually going to be Slick's responsibility so uh that'll be
0:50
interesting he's been a hardcore Android User for a long time and I'm I'm just
0:55
fascinated to see how this goes so Inside the Box we find not really a
0:59
whole lot there's little tiny
1:02
wallboard very very slim very uh very
1:05
stylish very small I mean personally I prefer if they ship a bigger wall wart
1:10
and it charges faster but as long as it you know charges the phone and charges
1:14
it adequately then I don't think we're going to have a problem here the USB port is on the side of it just like that
1:19
all right also included in the Box we've got some
1:22
documentation so start here which has
1:25
presumably some instructions because Blackberry 10 is all about gestures it's
1:30
about getting around with gestures there's no back button there isn't even
1:34
a home button there's not a single Hardware button on the phone so for
1:38
those of you who are used to iOS or used to Android devices where you do have
1:43
hard buttons it might be a bit of a thing to adapt to now I was one of those
1:48
few sort of you know demented people who
1:51
thought that the Blackberry playbook was awesome at the time and really enjoyed
1:55
the gesture-based navigation so maybe when Slick's done with the Z 10 I'll
1:59
spend some time with it and see what I think of that in more of
2:02
a of a smartphone like environment so the other things inside the Box are you
2:06
know nice long USB a to mini B cable for charging as well as a pair of headphones
2:12
although I'm not entirely convinced that anyone actually uses the uh headphon SL
2:16
headsets that are included with phones these days but there you go it's got a
2:20
single button so you can take your calls as well as a clip so you can clip it to
2:24
things and then what appear to be probably the most uncomfortable earbuds
2:27
ever um anyway that's not what you paid
2:31
good money for you paid good money for the zed10 phone so on the top of the
2:36
phone you're going to find your lock button as well as your headphone and
2:41
microphone Port so it's a 3 and 12 mm Jack I've actually powered up the phone
2:45
just now uh the Z1 has one of the brightest screens available on the
2:48
market with uh some guys measuring it as high as 700 CD perm squared which is
2:56
pretty much meant to be usable in direct sunlight the dis advantage to their the
3:01
way that they've implemented their screen brightness functionality is that
3:04
you actually cannot turn off auto brightness now this is one of the things
3:08
that bothered me immediately about Windows Phone 8 where some of the
3:11
decisions were being made for me for example in Windows Phone 8 it is
3:16
impossible to uh Auto to to lock the
3:20
auto rotate you can't do it it auto rotates no matter what and I'm looking
3:23
at this going really and then in iOS um
3:26
at least when back when I was using it maybe they've changed this now you were
3:29
only able to lock phones in portrait you couldn't lock them in landscape I'm like
3:33
why are you making these decisions for me why don't you let me make the decision whether I want to trade off
3:37
battery life or whether I want to trade off um screen brightness so so there you
3:42
go that's something that sort of doesn't appeal to me about it right off the bat
3:46
but you know since I'm not the one doing the I switched I won't be the one to
3:49
have any complaints about it I suppose on the side we find um micro HDMI as
3:54
well as a USB port for charging and then
3:57
on the bottom we've got what looks like like ah yes the pry spot to take off the
4:02
back plate so we'll we'll cover that in just a moment and then on the other side
4:05
we've got the volume rocker so on the back of the unit there's sort of a
4:10
chrome finish thing here I'm sure if you're watching this video you've probably seen uh a Blackberry Z 10 at
4:15
this point but there's the 8 megapixel rear camera as well as the Flash and
4:18
then on the front there's a 2 megapixel camera that is right about there now
4:23
I've had people complain oh look at that my screen turned off I've had people
4:27
complain about the finish of the back of the phone saying that it feels that it
4:30
feels cheap but I don't get that impression at all I mean let's be really
4:35
clear this is not the HTC1 this is not
4:38
like a beautiful one of the most beautifully anodized finished phones
4:42
I've ever encountered but it's also not
4:45
red that thing go it's also not a Galaxy S4 where it's like a glossy uh
4:49
scratchable piece of plastic on the back that actually feels quite flimsy even
4:54
compared to the zed10 so let's go ahead and pop the backing off of this one
4:58
where you can see it's just like it could be a butterfly if butterflies were
5:03
made of plastic and stuck to the back of phones whereas the one on the Z 10 which
5:06
I've already actually you know what that's really not any better is it okay
5:10
well there you go I like the texture then let me just put it that way I I
5:13
find it easier to not drop but the advantage of any of these phones that
5:17
have replaceable backs whether it's the S4 S3 um or whether it's the zed10 is
5:22
that you can replace that back cover with something else if you don't like the stock on So speaking of replacing
5:27
things if you don't like them there's a removable battery just like Samsung's
5:31
phones and then you've also got your sim slot right there so they make you remove
5:34
the battery in order to swap that out that's kind of a smart design and a
5:38
Micro SD card reader and if there's anything I've missed about the
5:42
HTC1 in spite of the fact that I went from iOS where Apple does has never
5:47
believed in expandable storage to Android um going from a 16 gig phone to
5:52
a 32 gig phone I found on a modern phone when you're shooting a lot of 1080p
5:56
video with how great the video capture capability ities of these new phones are
6:01
you're going to use up the space really fast if you're a content creator at all
6:06
so spec-wise you guys probably know this already it's 1280 by uh 768 so you are
6:12
fully capable of watching HD videos but not full HD that gives it 335 pixels per
6:17
inch which back when it was released was quite competitive but these days with
6:21
phones like the HTC1 and the uh and the Galaxy S4 on the market is a little bit
6:26
different um it's got Bluetooth 4 and C
6:29
Dual Band Wi-Fi 4G LTE a 1.5 GHz dual
6:33
core Snapdragon S4 plus which isn't as fast as what you might find in something
6:37
like the Droid DNA from HTC or the newer
6:41
s700 processors in the HTC1 and the
6:45
Galaxy S4 but it's still plenty fast for most of the things that you're going to
6:49
be doing whether it's uh browsing or whatever else it's got 2 gigs of RAM and
6:54
this is the kind of one of the coolest things I think that I've ever
6:57
encountered on anything anywhere ever so I haven't actually used the phone yet
7:01
I've not quite touched the screen yet but check this out so the way that
7:05
they've implemented the keyboard which is a very clean layout by the way let
7:08
just see seen reports that there's no delay no lag and that seems to be true
7:12
for the most part this is something that started to drive me crazy about the
7:15
iPhone 4 near the end of its usable lifespan for me but oh there's a bit of
7:19
a lag there yeah you can see that anyway
7:22
um is when there's a when there's a delay on the keyboard it just drives me
7:26
nuts but under the screen there's actually heat sensors so if if you
7:30
consistently mistype and Mish hit the Z10 will actually learn where you
7:35
usually hit when you're aiming for a particular key over time and make life
7:40
easier for you so hopefully slick will talk about that during his impressions
7:43
of the phone and uh yeah that that
7:46
should be just like absolutely awesome so let's show some of the basic
7:51
gestures so let's go back to see it's
7:54
funny because I I still don't know how to use it at all so I think it's uh from
7:59
one side Blackberry Hub so that takes you to the hub you can add accounts a
8:03
hub is cool because it allows you to bring all of your messaging together whether it's Facebook SMS uh or whatever
8:09
else and then besides just showing you everything at the same time you can also
8:13
filter out the things that you don't want to see uh let's just go ahead and
8:16
lock the phone so that I can so I can start from scratch here all right so
8:20
let's do a tour of the gestures that or the main gestures so we are unlocking
8:24
the phone up here actually here's something uh even when you're in sleep
8:29
you can unlock the phone by nope yeah there we go very cool so you don't
8:35
actually have to press the hard unlock button you can have it just locked and
8:38
going up from the bottom unlocks it or you can see the lock screen which will
8:43
give you a preview of any notifications that you have as well as allow you to
8:47
access your camera without actually unlocking the phone entirely so then we
8:51
do the same thing in order to do that so multitasking is accessed by scrolling up
8:55
from the bottom and from there you can actually see some of the things that I
8:59
have open open including search settings calendar now this is a funny one the
9:02
browser is open but you can see it sideways this is a bit of a weird thing
9:06
um where if you leave an app sideways and get this okay so you scroll up from
9:11
the bottom now and it opens up multi it's in portrait really so you have to
9:14
take your phone and go like this and then it leaves that app actually in in
9:19
landscape mode so there's there's some funny things that you know what for
9:22
those of you watching the video this is an unboxing I am not a Blackberry 10
9:26
expert by any stretch of the imagination but these are things that are already a
9:29
little bit unintuitive for someone who's coming from a few other major smartphone
9:34
platforms that I'm pretty familiar with now um so anyway so there's that from
9:38
the lock screen uh down swipe puts it in bedside mode which I personally think is
9:42
really cool I it basically just turns your phone into a clock and then gives
9:46
you easy access to alarms it's these kinds of productivity Focus things see
9:50
there's a little uh clock you can turn your notifications on or off uh there
9:54
you go well whatever they were off before now they're apparently I don't
9:58
know somewhere um and then you can turn your alarm on and off just by doing this
10:02
which I think is really neat and you get rid of that just by scrolling up and
10:05
getting rid of it uh the other thing too is when the phone's not unlocked again
10:10
these are very product right multitasking then we can
10:14
that see there as an Android user and an iOS user that's unintuitive to me on
10:20
both of the previous major platforms that I've used scrolling down from the
10:23
top lets me access my quick settings and my notifications regardless so there you
10:28
go we have to to be in the multitasking menu uh so rotation lock Wi-Fi
10:32
notifications alarms Bluetooth and settings are all accessible from within
10:37
here now moving over to your I guess whatever it's called app drawer right is
10:41
just scrolling to the right so you can see all your apps at launch they had
10:44
70,000 apps I don't know how many they have now but at least they have sort of
10:47
the critical ones things like Facebook and Twitter which were missing first
10:51
party apps um when Windows Phone 8 launched at least I think one or two of
10:56
them were same thing with YouTube where uh Windows Phone 8 was missing a a
11:00
native well okay there was a native app written by someone in collaboration with
11:04
Microsoft but it wasn't a Google app and uh that was that was really that was
11:08
really missing then um okay swiping oh
11:12
yeah so from within any apps let's go back to here so no matter where we are
11:16
we can go into our multitasking here this is a vastly inferior thing compared
11:20
to the uh Android experience that I've been having so when you go to here I can
11:26
see I don't need such a large preview
11:29
the browser thing that I had open or whatever else I prefer this approach
11:33
where I have nine things and I understand that the larger 4.7 in 1080P
11:37
screen versus a 4.3 in 720p screen
11:40
enables that but it's uh considering that they're in the same sort of price
11:43
bracket I would consider that a much Superior way of doing multitasking but
11:48
once you're in here you can preview your
11:52
messages just by holding and then if you gesture from left to right off the
11:55
screen you can access the Blackberry Hub which as you can see I did a quick test
11:59
between me myself and I of the text messaging and then I can also see my
12:03
text messages my Blackberry Messenger and the Hub which sort of once
12:09
you add the account puts everything in there um phone dialing so Blackberry
12:13
hasn't forgotten that this is a phone so the first thing that you're going to see
12:17
every time you scroll up from or swipe up from the bottom is going to be phone search and Camera these are sort of the
12:21
most critical these are the things I use most often on my phone with the
12:24
exception of search I really don't use that that much I usually just open a browser but phone is great to have there
12:30
you can't dial by number unfortunately so if I put in lus that's not going to
12:36
work this is a great feature on Android I use it all the time I almost never
12:41
look at my contact list anymore because I can just dial people by name
12:44
outstanding every platform should have it and that is a very very unfortunate
12:48
thing but apparently searching contacts is quick According to some of the um
12:53
sort of anecdotal evidence that I've read about but honestly I don't see this
12:57
being any quicker than what I already had on OS which is not as fast as just
13:01
dialing it in the new BlackBerry Messenger includes video calls and screen sharing as long as you have
13:05
enough data for it and of course the
13:09
feature that makes Blackberry Blackberry is the security so Blackberry balance
13:12
unlike Samsung's nox which is there bring your own device to work Initiative
13:17
for having a an employer accessible sort of corporate section of the phone when
13:21
you bring your own device and then your own personal one and they can't talk to each other Blackberry balance has been
13:25
around for years um and is very very
13:29
very well regarded in that in that respect so I think that's pretty much it
13:33
that covers what you guys probably need to know about the Z 10 that isn't going
13:37
to be covered by Slick when he goes cold turkey on Android with his S3 I'm taking
13:41
your S3 what yep no S3 for you that was
13:45
not part of the deal I'm hiding it you're going You're Going Z 10 no you're
13:50
going Z 10 and thank you for uh watching
13:53
this video don't forget to subscribe Planet Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos