If you’re thinking of ‘upgrading’ to a smartphone, the BlackBerry Z10 and its recent mouth-watering price slash to Rs 17990 is one of the worst ideas you’ll ever have. For starters, BlackBerry is at a point where no one’s quite sure about what’s going to happen to the company. Secondly, the brand just released two new smartphones at the MWC 2014 – the Q20 and the Z3.
Do you really want to pay almost Rs 18000 for the Z10 and then stick around to find out if BlackBerry sinks or swims? Also, while the Q20 is supposed to be the company’s flagship smartphone, the full-touch Z3 is built to be affordable. So why not wait to see what happens and then buy the upcoming budget friendly BB 10 OS handset?
Mind you, we wouldn’t get our hopes up for the Z3 since it seems to be targeted at the Indonesian market only. On the other hand, if it’s the classic physical QWERTY keypad peculiar to BlackBerry that you love, then the Q20 is bringing it back in the second quarter of this year.
Why we wouldn’t buy the BlackBerry Z10
It’s not just enough to have a good smartphone, but an app ecosystem to support it too. With BB 10.2.1, which is available for the Z10, users can now downloaded Android apps (.apk files) directly onto their device as long as they’re not doing so through Google Play Store.
The Z10 has some decent specs such as a 1280 x 78p resolution 4.2″ touchscren, 8MP camera, 16GB internal storage, 2GB RAM and 32GB microSD card support. But it only has a 1.5GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 processor. Cheaper handsets such as the Moto G sport more powerful quad core chips.
More worryingly, Computerworld notes that BlackBerry’s former CEO, Thorsten Heins, revealed that the company was picking up a $1 billion tab for unsold smartphones, mainly the Z10. The brand has lost its zing, it’s not Android or iOS and its products offer little to keep anyone excited about what it will do in the future.
Key specifications:
– 4.2-inch touchscreen
– 1.5GHz dual core chip
– BlackBerry 10 OS
– 2GB RAM, 16GB onboard
– 32GB expandability
– 8MP and 2MP cameras
– 1800mAh battery
– Black or white options
So until such a time that the company proves it can pick itself up, dust the mud off and start walking tall, we wouldn’t recommend buying a BlackBerry Z10 and the decaying software it runs on. Take a leaf from Nokia, BlackBerry.