Score: 7/10 (Good)
Pros Comfortable in the hand, loud speakers, 720p HD screen looks really good, fast and fluid, good call quality, excellent battery life, BB10.2 is a good improvement over BB10. | Cons Boring design, lackluster gaming performance, mediocre camera, only available on Verizon, BlackBerry World is in desperate need for good content. |
BlackBerry isn't in that great of a situation right now. Their numbers continue to drop, they have virtually no market share when it comes to consumer products, and they haven't had the groundbreaking flagship smartphone that they desperately need right now. Their latest smartphone, the BlackBerry Z30, is the newest flagship device the company has kicked out. While it's not a bad phone by any means, it's not the type of phone BlackBerry needs. It's a good phone, but good isn't what the company needs to stay afloat in the consumer market. Let's dive deeper into the Z30, and see why this handset could be one of the last consumer smartphones we see from BlackBerry.
Design/Build Quality
From a design standpoint, the BlackBerry Z30 isn't all that attractive. The Z30 is mostly just a black slab with slight grey accents that don't do too much for the overall look of the phone. On the front of the device is its large 5-inch display with a solid silver bar resting below it. Going to the top of the screen you can find the phone's earpiece speaker and 2MP front-facing camera. On the right-hand side of the device you will find the volume rocker with the physical button to launch the voice assistant in the middle of that. Below the rocker you will find two noise-canceling microphone pinholes. On the left side of the handset you will see the phone's microUSB and microHDMI ports. Located on the top edge is the 3.5mm headset jack and power/lock button. On the bottom edge is just a small fingernail cutout to remove the back plate of the phone. Moving on to the backside you will see the 8MP rear-facing camera with LED flash, along with the Z30's dual-speakers. Although the Z30 may not be a pretty phone, it has some of the loudest speakers I've heard in recent memory on a smartphone. Audio is astonishingly loud and delivers surprisingly good base levels to produce a truly great experience when listening to music and podcasts. Another nice aspect of the Z30's construction is the material used on the backside. The back of the Z30 is made out of a soft-touch rubbery grip that feels oh-so-good in the hand. The Z30's design may not win any awards for looks, but it does do a pretty good job when it comes to functionality.
Hardware
The Z30 boasts a large 5-inch display, and that's the largest screen we've ever seen on a BlackBerry handset. That screen has a pixel resolution of 1280 x 720 and brings along 295ppi. Although the display quality doesn't come near the 1080p FHD displays out there with 400+ppi, the Z30's display still looks quite nice. The Z30 uses a Super AMOLED panel, and this brings high color contrast, deep blacks, great viewing angles, and solid outdoor visibility. Unfortunately, the Z30's screen doesn't get that bright. Even with the brightness turned all the way up, I still sometimes found myself wanting the screen just a bit brighter.
To power you through everything you do on the Z30, BlackBerry packed in a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and 2GB of RAM. Most operations on the Z30 run quite well. Navigating through your home screen, browsing the Web, streaming video, and using applications always felt fast and responsive. However, when playing Jetpack Joyride I did notice some occasional stutter. It wasn't anything game-breaking, but it was a bit disappointing to see a flagship smartphone struggle with a game as light as Jetpack Joyride.
The BlackBerry Z30 features an 8MP camera on the back with LED flash, and a 2MP front-facing shooter. Although the cameras on the Z30 may not be the worst I've ever seen on the smartphone, they're certainly are a far cry from the best. Photos taken with the rear camera look okay, but details always appeared softer than I would have liked. Photos taken in low-light situations are also met with far too much digital noise. The front-facing camera isn't much better, but does get the job done for quick selfies and video chatting.
The BlackBerry Z30 is an exclusive to Verizon Wireless in the United States. If BlackBerry wants to make any attempt to get their numbers up, having their flagship handset exclusive to one carrier isn't going to help them at all. With that said, the Z30 does offer really great call quality. With Verizon's network, I never had any issue with always getting a strong connection, and the 4G LTE data speeds are always fantastic. People I talked to sounded crisp and loud, and I was told that I sounded great on their end of the calls as well.
Another great aspect of the Z30's hardware is its battery. Housed inside the BlackBerry Z30 is a non-removable 2,880 mAh battery. Although the fact that it is not removable may turn some of you away, it shouldn't, as the battery in the Z30 is a great performer. On my first day of full use with the Z30, which included heavy texting, moderate Web browsing, moderate application usage, light game playing, and light picture taking, I still had 45% remaining at 11:00 PM after having first turned the phone on at 7:00 AM. I never had any issue getting through an entire full day of use with the Z30, and could probably get through two full days if I used it correctly.
Software
The Z30 ships with BlackBerry's latest version of its mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10.2 BB10.2 still operates much like the original BB10 did, but brings a very cool new feature to it. That feature is Priority Hub. When swiping over to your BlackBerry Hub in 10.2, you will notice a new category named "Priority Hub". Priority Hub is essentially a curated Hub of all of your truly important contacts, messaging conversations, ongoing emails, etc. The BB10.2 OS will look for conversations and interactions you have the most of in Facebook, Twitter, emails, and messaging, and automatically add them to your Priority Hub. You can also manually add items to your Priority Hub. Simply go to the information you want to add, hold down on it, tap the up arrow, and that is now in your Priority Hub. It's not that big of a feature, but it does make finding the stuff you truly care about a heck of a lot easier.
All of the features you came to love in BB10 are also still present in BB10.2. The Peek gesture still lets you view your BlackBerry Hub inbox no matter what application you are in, and the fantastic multi-tasking we saw introduced in BB10 is still here and still awesome. BB10.2 is heavily gesture driven, and while this may not be a good thing for everyone, I find it very useful and practical. All of the gestures in BB10.2 work surprisingly well, and are always fast and smooth.
Another great area of the BB10.2 software is with its keyboard. Despite not having an iconic physical QWERTY keyboard that past BlackBerry handsets have been famous for having, the virtual QWERTY on the Z30 is outstanding. Typing on the Z30's on-screen keyboard is fast, accurate, and an overall enjoyable experience. As you use the Z30, the keyboard will learn phrases you commonly use, and will try to predict what you want to say next by adding completed words over the keyboard. To add those words to the message you are typing, simply swipe up on that word, and it is automatically added.
While the core of BB10.2 is great, there is one area of it that is desperately lacking: Content. BB10.2 uses the BlackBerry World for its application and content store, but it is easily one of the least appealing I have used on a mobile device. Sure, you've got your big names on there like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Evernote, but that's about it. You won't find Netflix, Instagram, Vine, Trello, YouTube, IMDb, Google+, or Spotify anywhere in the BlackBerry World. The list of lacking content goes on and on, but you at least now have an idea for just how sparse it is of even big name apps like I just listed. If you are coming to BB10.2 from Android, iOS, or even Windows Phone at this point in time, you will be greatly disappointed with the lack of available apps in the BlackBerry World.
Final Verdict
As you can see, the BlackBerry Z30 is a mixed bag of results. It has a good display, is relatively fast, has great call quality, an incredible battery, and great gesture-based software. Unfortunately, is also suffers from a boring design, lackluster gaming performance, mediocre cameras, and a desperately lacking app store. The Z30 is not a bad phone, but as I stated in the introduction to this review, it's not the flagship device that BlackBerry needs. The Z30 is currently selling for $199.99 on Verizon Wireless with a new two-year contract, and that just feels like way too much for what the Z30 brings to the table. When you can currently get the Moto X, LG G2, and HTC One on Verizon for cheaper than the Z30, it becomes apparent why this phone isn't selling like BlackBerry needs it to. If they could have gotten the price down to $99.99 with a two-year contract, then BlackBerry might have been able to get more of these out into consumers' hands. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for this phone. If you're a hardcore BlackBerry fan, and want to have the latest and greatest from the company, then the Z30 might just be for you. It's easily BlackBerry's best smartphone to date, but it's years too late.
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