BlackBerry Z3 Review: A Smartphone That Essentially Stick to its Roots

Rating:

3.5/5

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PROS

• Great Build
• Decent Battery
• Revamped BB OS

CONS

• Display Not Up to Mark
• Processor open to Buggy Performance

BlackBerry Z3 Review: Processor and Benchmark

By standards of the numbers, the BlackBerry Z3 is powered by a dual-core 1.2 GHz Krait 200 processor with Qualcomm MSM8230 Snapdragon 400 chipset.

Heading deeper into it, to be perfectly frank we were indeed subject to a few performance issues and jitters while our time with the handset. In fact, we even faced momentary freeze when shifting from one screen to another. Hence it proves: Good looks aren't everything.

The device, as you may already know, supports gestures as well. However, there was a 'slight' delay when we tried out the gesture mode to get things done around. While not at all negligible, the gestures took a bit of time to respond and offer what is expected. We recommend that you stick to the good ol' home button to get things done.

The problem with the BB OS lies in one particular area, and it might be enough to prove big in the long run. We are talking, of course, about the availability of apps. Leaving others out of the context, you should know the most of the daily benchmarking apps aren't available for the BB.

However, the benchmarking for the device (done via Kraken) showed that the device comes at par with most of the entry level handsets in the market. But very realistically, we were only expecting something similar to that when we first came across the device.

Performance-wise, a thing or two needs to be said about the built-in speakers for the device as well. While the speakers have been developed well to handle voice calls, that same isn't true when it comes to handling music.

Apart from that, you might also notice the device heating up at certain instances. Like, for example, if you are using the handset's web support for a long time or watching a HD video. But the heating wasn't that big a deal.