The BlackBerry Q10 comes in alongside, although perhaps will see a bit of a later release than, the touch-centric BlackBerry Z10. The Q10, as one may guess from its moniker, is a the QWERTY flagship for BlackBerry’s new BB10 operating system (OS).
BlackBerry/RIM certainly hasn’t forgot its die-hard fans and the reason it saw such success in the business market for so long. BlackBerry devices really do sport some of the best, if not the best hardware keyboards of any smartphone and, while many users shy away from that route these days in favor of a larger screen, hardcore emailers and texters still find hardware QWERTY keyboards very useful.
We don’t expect the Q10 to have as much appeal in the personal market as the Z10, but BlackBerry may hold on to, or even bring back, a lot of its business users with the Q10. It’s also a nice nod to its long-time fans who have kept the company afloat during the recent years of its declining popularity.
The BlackBerry Q10
Design-wise the Q10 is very much what we’ve seen from BlackBerry over the last couple of years. It’s a solid-looking, quite thick device with a larger screen than most of its progenitors (3.1 inches).
Despite this, there still seems to be plenty of room for the keypad, especially with the omission of a trackpad (or trackball) in favor of a multi-touch display.
Display
The 720x720 3.1 inch AMOLED display of the Q10 should be enough to keep most users more than happy. It’s by far the highest pixel density we think we’ve seen on a BlackBerry, with BlackBerry claiming 360 pixels per inch (ppi).
Demonstrations have shown the screen to be fast and fluid, something that will hopefully hold up to real world testing.
The Q10 seems to be a pretty good melding of QWERTY and touchscreen design, with a big enough screen to function well with most services while not skimping on keyboard space. Overall we think traditional BlackBerry fans will be very happy with this display.
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Overview
We think the BlackBerry Q10 should definitely appeal to die-hard BlackBerry fans as well as more than a few businesses. It might even bring back a number of corporate customers that it’s lost to Apple and Android in recent years.
The business-oriented design coupled with BB10’s ability to split one phone in to essentially two separate devices, one for work and one for play, is definitely a strong offering in the business market.
As for personal users, we think that the touchscreen-oriented Z10 will probably do better there. However, we should make note that while a hardware QWERTY keyboard might sound out-dated to some more modern users, you honestly can’t beat it for a great typing experience.
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