The good: The BlackBerry 10 OS
looks terrific, and comes with many of
the world-class features you'd
demand from a modern OS. It also
adds a few of its own signature tools
for security and business users.
The bad: Despite the grown-up look,
RIM's new OS is riddled with
perplexing omissions and behavioral
inefficiencies that wear on you over
time.
The bottom line: BlackBerry lovers
who can get past the rookie mistakes
will find a polished-looking OS that's
packed with interesting and useful
features, but happy Android and iOS
users won't find a reason to switch.
Design, Features & Performance
(out of 10)
Review
Let me start by saying this: I really
wanted to fall in love with BlackBerry
10 OS. Overhauling and reinventing a
mobile operating system is a
tremendous undertaking, and one
that deserves respect for the blood,
sweat, and tears that go into
designing and coding an entire
platform from the ground up. In this
case, it's based on QNX, a version of
which also powered the BlackBerry
PlayBook. You expect a few bobbles
here and oversights there, and if
there's one thing that the
beleaguered handset maker needs
right now, it's a break.
In many ways, RIM's hard work has
paid off. With its richly designed
graphical interface, BlackBerry 10 is a
mobile OS for grown-ups. Its spin on
the virtual keyboard gives RIM plenty
to boast about, its enhanced
BlackBerry Messenger app is exactly
as it should be, and the innovative
BlackBerry Balance feature will be a
certain type of business user's dream.
There are media features, to be sure,
and games at the ready, but given a
choice of all available handsets, few
teens and tweens will thirst for
BlackBerry's button-up aesthetic.
Based entirely on taps and gestures,
the OS takes a little time to get used
to, and some front-end behaviors are
odd, or inconvenient, or just plain
don't make sense. There's no single,
overarching failure I can point to, but
rather, a growing list of missing
features and aggravating issues that
take their toll in the aggregate; not a
single fatal blow, but a thousand
paper cuts. These represent the little
details that can make or break an
experience, and they're the kinds of
things that RIM should have ironed
out in all these years of
development.
Editor's note: This review is based on
early impressions after a full week of
use; rating is subject to change as we
spend more time with the device and
operating system.
Interface and navigation
From the first, I really connected to
BlackBerry 10's visual design. It is, in
a word, polished, and perfectly picks
up the thread of BlackBerry's
previous design language. Colors are
rich, icons are large enough to easily
touch, and animations flow smoothly.
One example: the fade you see when
slowly swiping from one screen to the
next.
There are some exceptions, though.
RIM's designers forgot to update the
look and feel of the settings menu,
which just reverts us to the Old
BlackBerry.
New BlackBerry is entirely gesture-
driven, its layout sort of resembling a
handful of playing cards spread out in
an overlapping row. To the far left
you've got BlackBerry Hub, the
universal inbox where you can see all
your messages and notification alerts.
To the right of that is the "Active
Frame" area, a nerdy name to
represent the multitasking screen
that stores up to eight thumbnails of
your open apps. Move right again to
see your pages of app icons, which
you can rearrange, delete, and plop
on top of each other to create
folders. You can access the dialer,
universal search, and camera from
every screen.
For the most part, you'll use the
usual swipes up, down, left, and right,
though there are two special moves
to know. First, you can swipe up from
bottom of the screen to wake the
phone (you can use the lock screen
buttons as well). Second, there's the
"Peek" gesture, where you quickly
pull your finger up and to the right, as
if tracing a perfect right angle. This
temporarily suspends your app so you
can glance at your notifications in the
Hub. Lift up and you close the app
and jump to the Hub. Keep your
finger pressed to the screen, and you
can return to the app without losing
your place. I like Peek.
Closing out of an app requires the
most coaching, but it isn't hard. You
swipe up from the bottom until the
app shrinks in size. Let go and it
becomes a thumbnail in the
multitasking window. You can then
close it by tapping the X.
As you navigate around, you'll notice
that BB10's menus aren't entirely
consistent. Sometimes you long-
press to surface the context menu,
other times you pull down or swipe
over to the right gutter. Sometimes
you'll find more options in a
dedicated menu button, one that
"borrows" the same ellipsis design
used with Windows Phone and
Android 4.x.
The lock screen (or "Standby screen")
gives you a read-only glimpse of your
awaiting messages (you can't act on
them from here), and a camera icon
you can hold and press to open.
Not everyone will love RIM's lack of
navigational buttons, but I don't mind
using gestures myself. What does
bother me, however, is that any time
you tap to open an app, the operating
system first scoots you to the Active
Frames window before launching. This
extraneous step complicates what
should be a smooth, logical action --
seriously, what could be easier than
opening an app? I don't really care
what happens on the back end, but
seeing every app open from the
multitasking window is just jerky and
unnecessary.
At times it's possible to get lost in
the OS, especially as you're just
picking it up. For example, from your
notifications, you can swipe deeper
left to access the Hub submenu. But
if you swipe right again, you might
cover up the notifications window
with another window instead. For the
most part, it doesn't take long to get
into the flow of things, but a user
guide is necessary when you're just
getting started.
Basic smartphone features
As with all of today's mobile
operating systems, BlackBerry 10
supports multiple e-mail addresses,
calendars, and social-networking
accounts.
There's support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
NFC, mobile hot spot, VPN, and
Internet tethering. You'll find airplane
mode, DLNA sharing, and accessibility
features, including a magnification
gesture, hearing aid support, and
settings for TTY for teletypewriters.
Your BlackBerry ID forms the
backbone; you enter it or create it
when you first boot up your BB10
device.
This might be a good time to mention
that RIM included an interesting
feature, Bedtime Mode, which turns
off all chirps, buzzes, and incoming
calls until the alarm sounds. It's a
good, useful, likable idea, until you
realize that while working on the
details of the grander plan, RIM
somehow forgot to include more than
three alarm tones. If that weren't
bad enough, of this trio, only one's a
real ditty. The other two are a series
of repetitive, soul-enraging beeps.
On the plus side, BlackBerry 10 OS
also supports screenshots. On the
BlackBerry Z10 smartphone , you
capture a shot of the screen by
pressing down on both volume
buttons at once. It's pretty handy.
Virtual keyboard
Here are seven things I like about
RIM's virtual keyboard:
• It has a clean layout
• It's responsive
• It stores up to three languages at
a time; just type naturally and it'll
take care of the rest
• You can press and hold a letter to
capitalize or grab an alternate symbol
• You can swipe left on the Clear
key to delete full words
• It creatively presents flickable
word predictions
• It has great autocorrection
In some screens, you'll see a row of
numbers capping the four rows of
letters. Word predictions work two
ways. In its default mode, the
predictive word pops up between the
rows of letters, corresponding to the
next letter you may type. You can
also adjust settings to see predictions
hover at the top of the keyboard
instead. To add a word, flick it up
toward the composition area.
I like RIM's creative approach to
predictions, but I found that words
were small and hard to read and that
this method of flicking didn't fit into
my work flow. In the end, it was
often faster and easier to just type
the whole word. Luckily, autocorrect
took care of my many errors. RIM
says the keyboard adapts to your
typing style and finger placement
over time.
One thing I noticed is that predictions
weren't available from every third-
party app. For example, you won't
get any help when you're logging in
to Facebook, in the universal search
window, or when signing on to a Wi-Fi
network, two places where adding
your username or .com suffix would
be quite helpful. Trial and error
teaches that pressing and holding the
keyboard's spacebar retracts it.
If you'd rather talk than type, the
keyboard accepts voice dictation. It
helps to keep things simple, and if
you'd like punctuation, you'll have to
say it yourself. Unfortunately, voice
dictation takes time to process, and it
isn't smart enough to capitalize words
at the beginning of a new sentence.
Browser
In some ways, BlackBerry 10's
tabbed, WebKit-based browser is
pretty standard. It's fueled by HTML
5, and you can also toggle on Adobe
Flash support in the settings. Though
it mines Bing search results by
default, you can reset to the Google
or Yahoo engines.
Double-tapping quickly zooms you in
and out to make the page much more
readable, and reader mode
automatically adjusts page width and
makes it easy to increase or decrease
front size. Other tools include find-
on-page search, bookmarks and
history, private browsing, and a
whitelist for permissions.
That's all well and good, but heavy
browser use is where the
inconsistencies bubble up, many of
them having to do with rendering
issues. Some mobile Web pages
didn't render correctly, and it
routinely took a very long time for
Wikipedia pictures and Google Maps
images to load in search results -- in
some cases, minutes, even with the
full power of 4G LTE. However, I
suspect that I have an issue with my
particular testing phone, so I'll revisit
this when my new review unit
arrives.
The browser also tripped up when I
tried clicking phone numbers to call
businesses from Web pages. I could
often click to call from Google Local
search results, but had to copy and
paste numbers from Yelp and
OpenTable. You'd also better forget
clicking maps in Google's search
results to open the Maps app; you'll
only reload the search results page.
When the browser worked at quickly
loading Web pages, it worked well,
and I liked that opening a new tab
didn't whisk you away from your
current page. Instead, you see a
badge that stars your new page in the
tab menu.
Voice Control
To say that voice assistants have
caught on is an understatement.
BlackBerry 10's new Voice Control
app places its usual commands within
the context of a voice assistant that
talks back to you. Sure, it looks like a
'Berry-ized version of Apple's Siri , but
like most Siri knockoffs it responds to
precise commands, rather than to
Siri's conversational language. For
instance, you can command Voice
Control to open the weather app or
search the Internet for weather
information, but you can't ask it what
the weather will be like, or if you'll
need an umbrella.
It also doesn't help that Voice Control
sounds like a robot. A friendly female
one, but a robot nonetheless. I won't
fault the app for its particular speech
requirements, but I do fault it for
being slow, and for its frequent
connection errors during my testing
period. Still, I was able to search the
Internet, leave myself reminder
notes, schedule appointments, and
dictate very short, simple messages.
E-mail
Always one of BlackBerry's strengths,
RIM's thorough e-mail tradition is
carried on in BlackBerry 10 OS. You
can flag messages, mark messages as
unread, file them by folder, and invite
the contact to a meeting.
When you're composing a message,
BlackBerry 10 goes the extra mile,
allowing you to attach various files,
format text, and change text color. Is
the e-mail urgent? You can mark its
importance. Want to process a lot of
e-mails at once? No problem, you can
file, flag, mark as read, and delete in a
batch.
The OS is good at popping up contacts
as you type, but the second you tap
the Compose button, it suggests two
contacts you might want to address.
The problem with this is that there
seems to be no rhyme or reason to
the same two names I keep seeing;
they're certainly not the two I've
contacted most often.
BlackBerry Messenger
Another of RIM's longtime strong
suits, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)
sends peer-to-peer messages,
photos, voice notes, contact
information, and files between
BlackBerry users for free. In
BlackBerry 10, the app blossoms,
adding voice chat, video chat, and
screen sharing to its beloved
emoticons and group messaging.
I tested video chat and screen sharing
with a RIM employee. Both worked
well during the brief test, though I'll
continue testing with other users.
Even though BBM video and voice
chat will technically work over the
data network, expect carriers like
AT&T to lock it down to Wi-Fi use
only.
Another BBM addition in BlackBerry
10 lets you add contacts through NFC
in addition to scanning a code. So
long as NFC is on, touching the backs
of compatible phones will transfer
contact details.
Even though you can share images
through BBM, I wasn't able to
successfully share a photo with my
RIM contact. As I said, I'll continue
testing BBM in the coming weeks.
Maps
I'll just come right out and say it: I'm
disappointed with BlackBerry 10's
limited Maps app. Importantly, it has
turn-by-turn voice navigation for
drivers, it can show traffic, and lets
you chose certain route options, like
the fastest or shortest route.
However, I didn't see any local
business names or clickable points of
interest, and there's no compass on
the map to show you what's what.
You can forget about 3D view,
satellite view, and walking or transit
directions.
On the plus side, I do like that you
can view recent spots, and there's a
good interface for searching out local
businesses. I also really like being
able to filter those contacts for whom
you have a mailing address; it makes
it easy to launch navigation without
having to leave the app.
With that foresight, it would have
been nice if BlackBerry 10 also let you
launch the map from an address on
the Yelp Web site, for instance, or
one listed in Google's search results.
You also can't open the Maps app
when you tap a map in Google's
search results. As far as I'm
concerned, that's a basic mapping
failure.
In the best-case scenario, RIM would
have licensed Google Maps, at last
giving it parity with the best mobile
mapping system around.
Music
BlackBerry 10's music player gave me
a good music experience. You get
album art and tracks, intuitive
controls, shuffle, and repeat. You can
create playlists on the fly, or any
time, transfer songs to other devices,
and visit BlackBerry World for more.
There are two nice surprises as you
listen to music; the first is that
tapping the album art retracts the
image to reveal the album roster or
playlist. Just tap again to get back
where you were.
If you control the song after you
leave the music app, a tap on either
volume button pulls up a widget that
flashes album art and info, plus the
options to Pause/Play and skip ahead
or go back.
Camera and video
A camera lens can lead to poor or
stellar photos, but the software plays
a role, too. In BlackBerry 10, you
have a few modes and scenes. There
are the usual camera and video
modes, and there's also TimeShift,
which takes multiple shots along a
timeline. Right after the photo snaps,
you can rewind along the timeline to
save the best "moment." This is best
for photos of groups, dogs, and
subjects that aren't adept at staying
still.
I like the idea of TimeShift, but the
fact that you can't activate it from
the regular camera mode means you
have to plan ahead when you want to
use it.
So what are the camera's other
scenes? You've got burst mode and
stabilization (which automatically
launches when you turn on the video
camera,) but there's no built-in HDR
or panorama. You will, however, find
scenes tuned for capturing action,
night scenes, the beach, and
whiteboards. You can turn on flash,
and choose a 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio.
Compared with what you get from
other cameras, the options are on the
sparser side. You can't choose a
smaller resolution, for instance,
adjust white balance or ISO settings,
toggle geotagging, or turn on a grid.
In addition, there's no self-timer and
there's no way to turn off the camera
shutter sound, which means you can't
take incognito photos or even take a
screenshot without alerting the
world.
The video setting shoots from the
front or rear camera; from the rear,
it'll take either 720p HD or 1080p HD
video. You can choose to turn on the
flash or leave it off, but you won't be
able to shoot limited-size videos for
video messaging, if that's what you'd
like. I guess RIM trusts that you'll be
able to censor yourself.
RIM gets big points in my book for its
extensive built-in photo-editing
software, but then loses a point or
two for lumping screenshots and
camera photos together. The OS gets
another demerit for a confusing
workaround in which you create new
albums using an outdated file
manager system, a method I never
would have tried without the
assistance of a friendly customer
service representative tasked with
helping reviewers. A file manager,
really? That is so 2006.
Text editing
RIM's Documents To Go suite of
Microsoft Office apps offers up a rich
experience for creating and editing
documents and spreadsheets, and
viewing PDFs and presentations. As in
the good old days, you'll find a wealth
of formatting options that are fairly
easy to track down, and you can easily
share documents through a variety of
channels, including Bluetooth, NFC,
and BlackBerry Messenger.
The methods of copying, pasting, and
text selection are also interesting
takes, but this is where the bad news
comes in. Accurately dropping in the
big circular cursor is easy, but the
cursor makes it impossible to select
the word you're on. You have to
move the cursor first, which can be
tricky. Otherwise, selecting words is
easy when you touch and hold on the
word for a moment. To do more with
your highlights, you also have to first
select a word, then long-press to
bring up the context menu.
Here's another idiosyncrasy: when
you use the context menu to select
the entire range of text, it isn't
immediately clear how to delete the
entire chunk of words. It is also hard
to work out how to rename a
document, and I'm still trying to
determine why RIM wants me to go
through the extra step of pressing
the edit button before making
changes to text in a Documents To Go
file. Why can't I just tap it to get the
keyboard so I can start typing? RIM,
which bought the Documents To Go
developers a few years back, should
streamline these steps in future
updates.
BlackBerry World
The brand-new BlackBerry World app
store looks fantastic, with saturated
icon colors on a black background. You
can download apps, games, music
(provided by longtime partner
7Digital), TV, and movies.
RIM clearly has its sights set on
profits. It's easy to find top paid apps,
but there's no list at this point for
free content -- even though free apps
can be found. Good luck trying to
search for podcasts; App World has no
dedicated section at this point.
From the content page, you can read
reviews or add your own, share, and
contact the developer. It would be
nice if you were able to launch the
app from the download menu.
The question of apps is huge for
BlackBerry. Major social networks like
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and
Foursquare are ready from the get-
go. Box, Dropbox, Flixster, and Angry
Birds Star Wars are other heavy
hitters. Fifteen EA Games titles
(including Plants vs. Zombies,) The
New York Times, and The Economist
are also ready. The question that
remains is how many other major and
independent developers will also
build apps for the new platform. We'll
be keeping an eye on this space.
BlackBerry Balance
For a long time, BlackBerry was
synonymous with the business user.
With BlackBerry Balance, RIM keeps
its corporate promise. If your IT
department has apps to install, you'll
be able to swipe down on the home
screens to see buttons for Personal
and Work.
Toggle them to bounce back and forth
between your personal profile and
your company-given work apps. The
divide locks up your sensitive
corporate information, including work
e-mail, which RIM secures with 256-
bit AES encryption.
Since CNET doesn't install IT apps at
this time, I wasn't able to test this
outside of a brief demo with RIM,
though I will say that toggling back
and forth was quick and easy.
Security
BlackBerry has had a reputation for
security from the very beginning.
BlackBerry 10 continues using
encrypted servers, collectively calling
its security elements BlackBerry
Safeguard. These include a security
wipe, a pop-up blocker, parental
controls, certificates, and application
permissions.
The security wipe section is where
you'll manage data, files, and apps.
BlackBerry Protect handles the
remote location and maintenance for
your lost or stolen device.
BlackBerry Link desktop software
You'll get your updates over the air,
but for transferring data through the
cable, RIM unveils BlackBerry Link for
Mac and PC. This app, a vast visual
improvement to the BlackBerry
desktop software that came before,
installs itself when you plug in the
BB10 device.
As with most managers of this type,
you can manage automatic syncing
options, and transfer music, photos,
video, and documents.
How it stacks up
Although it builds off previous
BlackBerry operating systems,
BlackBerry 10 is a brand-new thing.
On the whole, it's more sophisticated
right out the gate than Microsoft's
first iteration of the Windows Phone
OS, though some of what RIM left out
-- like a way to turn off the camera
shutter sound and click-to-call from
any app -- leaves me scratching my
head.
There are some fresh, inspiring
features for sure, like Bedtime Mode
and BlackBerry Balance, but I would
have loved to see RIM get even more
creative, let's say with a multicolored
LED light that shone a different color
depending on the type of awaiting
message.
Then there are the OS behaviors that
are downright confusing,
inconvenient, or inefficient, like
dumping screenshots and camera
photos in the same bucket, and
opening every app from the
multitasking page.
I'm not even sure how to classify the
frequent network connection errors I
saw, though I suspect some of those
are related to testing on a review unit
before the absolutely final software
release.
The conclusion I return to time and
again is that there are people who
will love BlackBerry 10 for its bigger-
picture interface, keyboard, and
business and security features. These
people will already be fans. But until
RIM can smooth out the kinks and
offer a few more compelling reasons
to switch, iOS and Android users can
feel justified staying put.
