It was just recently when BlackBerry had had a hit and miss relationship with touchscreen technology with its smartphones. It attempted to combine touch sensitive displays with physical keypads in a variety of guises and even introduced a clickable screen that was an even stranger hybrid. However advanced the technology they built, it failed to find success on the same level as Apple with its pure, user-friendly iPhone experience.
But now the BlackBerry Z10 represents the best chance for BlackBerry to level the playing field and show that it can do touchscreen smartphones just as well as its competitors. So should you sell your blackberry and cut your losses by giving the iPhone a chance, or does the Z10 do enough to make the most of touchscreen interactivity?
- The Z10 is endowed with a 4.2 inch touchscreen display with a 720p HD resolution. While this may not be as big or densely populated with pixels as rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S4, it is much bigger than the sub-3 inch panels found on older BlackBerry models.
- It is also, more importantly, bigger and better than the 4.0 inch Retina Display of the iPhone 5. The larger area is combined with a higher pixel density, which means it is harder to differentiate between the individual pixels of Z10’s screen.
- While the hardware is not necessarily vital for a good touchscreen experience, it does put BlackBerry in a solid position.
Software Interface
- Things get much more subjective as soon as you start to look at the user interface which is paired with the touchscreen itself. The underlying software can hamper a handset even if the display has the potential to be responsive, as anyone who has used a bargain basement Android tablet will appreciate. With the iPhone the UI has remained fairly consistent over the last six years, although with the impending arrival of iOS 7 there are going to be some aesthetic and practical changes that alter the way users engage with their touchscreen.
- The Z10 runs the recently released BB 10 operating system and unlike BlackBerry’s previous platforms, this has actually been designed around touchscreen interactivity.
- Built on the same underpinnings that made the BlackBerry PlayBook so easy to use, if not exactly a commercial success, BB 10 on the Z10 is different from iOS in that it gives you the ability to control homescreens, menus and apps using unique gestures.
- The dual core processor inside the Z10 keeps the interface feeling fluid and although those transitioning from an iPhone may feel like they are a little out of their depth at first, the learning curve is subtle enough that they should soon be completely at home.
Most critics will agree that BlackBerry has at last worked on how to do smartphone touchscreens properly. Whether or not you think they are able to better Apple, or the other rival manufacturer is a different matter, it would not be wise to count BlackBerry as out of the game.
How about you which phone do you think is the best choice?
Stay gorgeous everyone!