BlackBerry Z10 Out in India at Rs 43490: The Good, The Bad and The Pointless Price Tag

Finally, Canadian smartphone maker, BlackBerry has released its flagship smartphone - Z10 in India - which runs on the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Z10 runs on BlackBerry 10 and the successor of the long neglected operating system is back into the competitive market segment. It seems like BlackBerry hopes to bang the global smartphone market with the newly launched OS, despite of the fact that the segment is highly dominated by Android and iOS followed by Windows Phone 8.

BlackBerry has officially launched the flagship model in India at Rs 43,490 and the handset will hit the retail stores from tomorrow, that is February 26. Prior to the launch, the grey market price of the Z10 was Rs 75,000 and ahead of the launch it dropped down to Rs 53,000.

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Key Specifications

As far as specs are concerned, BlackBerry Z10 comes with a 4.2 inch capacitive touchscreen display with 1280 x 768 pixel resolution, 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 dual-core processor, 8MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, 16GB internal storage, 2GB RAM, micro SD card slot, HDMI port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, 4G LTE and a removable 1,800 mAh battery.

BlackBerry Z10 - Love and Hate Aspects

By launching a smartphone at Rs 43,490, BlackBerry has entered the rivalry with the other premium priced smartphones in the market. Though the pricing may seem to be too high, the handset has several aspects that would make it a better offering.

Meanwhile, it is too early to predict if the BB10 OS will help the company to beat the heat in the OS competition, Gizbot has lined up the love and hate aspects of newy launched Z10 smartphone to give an insight to the interested readers.

Display - Not too Lovely

Z10 packs a 4.2 inch multi-touch capacitive touchscreen display with 1280 x 768 pixel resolution and 335 ppi pixel density. This is not the first all touchscreen phone from BlackBerry, however, the company failed miserably in the past.
Hence, the company has come up with an intuitive touchscreen embedded in a palm friendly hardware, but, when Android smartphones are growing larger touching 5 inch displays with 1080p resolution, a mere 720p resolution screen is not a lovely welcome from BlackBerry.

BlackBerry 10 Software Features - Impressive

Z10 based on the newly launched BlackBerry 10 platform with comes with features including BlackBerry Flow, improved BBM with Peek feature, BlackBerry Hub with unified inbox, pre-installed productivity apps including Evernote, Docs To Go, Dropbox, impressive predictive typing tool and more.

Hardware - A downside

While the smartphone market is talking quad core, BlackBerry Z10 is based on a 1.5GHz Krait dual-core processor, which is coupled with 2GB RAM, which should be sufficient for the handset to handle everything. However, a quad core processor is badly missing, which could contribute for better multi-tasking and other performance related improvements.

BlackBerry 10 Gestures - Good

BlackBerry 10 operating system is built around touch based gestures. By swiping the finger in from the edge of the screen users can perform various actions, such as bringing up the app-switcher and app-launcher screen, an extended menu of options and more.

The gestures are the only way to reach a function and this is the main reason for Z10 to lack buttons around the edges including volume rocker, power and camera.

Camera - Impressive

BlackBerry is making a big claim about its 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. The most notable feature of the camera interface is TimeShift mode, which is a type of burst shooting mode that captures a number of shots in a second and allows the users to select the best one.

The 8MP primary camera with LED flash is capable of capturing decent images during daylight and low light conditions, though it may not be the best camera used on smartphones.

Preloaded Applications - Fair

Z10 comes preloaded with a wide range of preloaded applications including EverNote, Docs To Go, Adobe Reader, Weather, and MovieMaker to offer a better overall user experience.

Battery - Average

The good news is that Z10 comes with a detachable 1,800 mAh battery, however, there is bad news as the battery is smaller than the ones found in other similar smartphones and it is not capable of offering enough backup.

BlackBerry World - Needs improvement

Apps have been a big talking point in the launch of BB10 OS with BlackBerry assuring that it has got loads of developers creating applications especially for the platform. BlackBerry World was launched with over 70,000 applications in the store, with big names such as Whatsapp and Skype are yet to make an appearance on the platform.

While 70,000 does not sound like a lot, especially when you consider the likes of Android and iOS, that boast over 700,000 each, BlackBerry reckons it's the quality not quantity in BlackBerry World that makes all the difference.

Price Tag - Pointless

When BlackBerry announced that it will launch the handset in India on February 25, 2013, there were several speculations about Z10 on the web. Several media reports claimed that the handset will be priced heftily at Rs 45,000, while few others have claimed that the company will be cutting all the corners to keep the costs low.

The price tag of Rs 43,490 might seem to be a whopping investment for a majority of the consumers, since BlackBerry has not been in the market for quite a while, and the latest OS based Z10 is the last chance for the company to win the corporate world once again. Hence, analysts believe that the company could have coupled the specs with an affordable price tag to make a comeback and win over the BlackBerry boys again. However, right now it would be really tough the manufacturer to battle against the consumer loyal brands like Samsung, Apple and Nokia.

At the same time, Infibeam has mentioned that the online retailer site will be offering the device on pre-order at a price of Rs 5,000, however, the final pricing will be reflected only tomorrow
.