Meet the BlackBerry® Z10

BlackBerry has a very, very tough sell on its hand if it's trying to convince Android and iOS users (and perhaps former BlackBerry loyals who have strayed from the pack) to return to the business phone herd. But the Q10 might do a better job of grabbing new customers and retaining old ones than the Z10 thanks to its keyboard, something that virtually no smartphone makers bother with anymore. Of course, the phone itself is only half the battle. Maybe not even half. The new BlackBerry 10 operating system has to be a success.


The Z10 will follow standard smartphone pricing and cost $200 on-contract on Verizon when it launches in March ($150 on other US carriers). The U.K. and Canada are getting the phone later this week, however, which is the first wrinkle in BlackBerry's launch plans. BlackBerry plans to pour major money into marketing the Z10, including a Super Bowl ad on Sunday, but US carriers won't be putting the phone on sale for several weeks. BlackBerry says longer testing times on US carriers are responsible for the delay.
The Q10, BlackBerry's other new phone, stick with tradition. It's not slated for a launch this week or in March--that's coming in April. The Q10 looks a whole lot like a BlackBerry thanks to a 3.1-inch screen and, yes, a full QWERTY keyboard. But even the tried-and-true BlackBerry design has seen some modernization--the display resolution is a solid 720x720 pixels, and it supports touch, like the BlackBerry Bold 9900 before it. The back's made of a (supposedly tougher than plastic) glass, and the internals match the Z10. That means 1.5GHz of processing power and 2GB of RAM to keep the phone running smoothly.



 So what's BlackBerry promising with 10? Lots of apps, for starters.


70,000 of them, including Skype, Rdio, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Kindle, MLB at Bat, Angry Birds, and Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, those aren't all brand new apps, and apps designed for the Blackberry coexist in the store with apps build for Android, which BlackBerry can run. But apparently they don't run too well--according to The Verge, the apps run sluggishly in software emulation of Android Gingerbread and feel disconnected from the rest of the operating system.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are notably integrated into the operating system, and so are Dropbox and Box for sharing and storing files in the cloud. Similarly, a native Remember app links up with Evernote for notes and reminders