Verdict
With its big, bold screen, the BlackBerry Z30 is the smart
phone for you if you like watching movies, but refuse to leave
BlackBerry. Its abysmally stocked app store, however, means
you'd have a more pleasant experience overall looking at
similarly sized Android phones.
Good
Big screen with good colours
Attractive design
Good battery life
Bad
Poorly stocked app store
Screen isn't very bright
Doesn't offer anything over Android rivals
BB10 software still has some annoying quirks
Price
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What do you think?
BlackBerry has fallen on tough times of late. After it
announced that it had lost almost $1bn earlier this year, it
received a buyout offer of $4.7bn, a vast drop from its $83bn
worth only five years ago. Its launch of BlackBerry 10 on the
Z10 was supposed to be its big re-entry into the smart phone
world, but it wasn't well received by BlackBerry fans,
resulting in poor sales.
Not wanting to fade into the background, BlackBerry has
thrown a haymaker in the form of the Z30. Like the Z10
before it, it's an all-touch phone, ditching the physical
keyboard that made BlackBerry popular among business
types. It has a dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel camera
and can be picked up for £500 SIM-free from Selfridges or
free from £29 per month on a two-year contract.
It's not cheap, so does it offer enough to justify the money
and give the Canadian company a much needed boost?
Should I buy the BlackBerry Z30?
If you've been looking on in envy at your mates with their big
screened Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4, but for
some reason you absolutely must have a BlackBerry phone,
then yes, the Z30 is the phone for you. It's got the biggest
screen available on a BlackBerry, with plenty of room for
movies and pictures.
If you're looking for a big screened phone and absolutely must
have a BlackBerry, then this is the phone for you.
As a phone it's not terrible either. The BlackBerry 10 interface
has its quirks, but it's got some cool features and it's fairly
easy to use. It's still let down by its awful app store though,
which is missing a lot of important titles and gets little love
from developers. If you like trying out the latest apps, services
and games, BlackBerry isn't going to suit.
Instead, check out the range of similarly sized Android
phones. The HTC One, Sony Xperia Z1 and Galaxy S4 all
have superb Full HD displays, superbly powerful processors
and have access to the hundreds of thousands of apps
available in the Google Play store.
Design and build quality
With a 5-inch display shoved inside its frame, the Z30 is the
biggest BlackBerry phone to date. It measures a sizeable
140mm long, 72mm wide and 9.4mm thick, making it a little
longer than the 5-inch Samsung Galaxy S4, due to the
additional space at the top and bottom of the Z30's screen.
The Z30 isn't going to appeal to those of you after a small
phone to slide into your suit pocket without causing
embarrassing bulges. If size is an issue then check out the Z10
-- its 4.2-inch screen makes it much more pocket-friendly.
The Z30 isn't ridiculously huge though -- not compared to the
5.7-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3 -- and it's quite comfortable
to hold in one hand. If you're concerned about its size, try and
get a hands on in a shop before you spend any money.
The back is supposedly highly resistant to scratches and
scuffs.
Size aside, it's not a bad looking phone. The rubberised back
of the Z10 is gone, replaced instead with the same 'glass-
weave', carbon-fibre lookalike seen on the Q10. BlackBerry
reckons it's highly resistant to scratches and scuffs. It certainly
put up well with some attacks from my keys, but how it looks
after months of constant use remains to be seen.
The front of the phone is dominated almost entirely by glass,
which curves attractively at the edges. There's a silver chin on
the bottom too. It's inoffensive enough, but I don't really know
what it's doing there. If BlackBerry could just snap it off, the
body would be shorter and it wouldn't alter the screen size.
It's not a bad looking phone, although it measures a sizeable
140mm long, 72mm wide and 9.4mm thick.
Around the edges you'll find the volume and power buttons, a
micro-USB port for data transfer and charging and a mini-
HDMI port for hooking it up to a bigger display or projector
to go through Powerpoint presentations. There's also an odd
section of the edging that looks like a flap covering a port --
it's not though, and I only found that out after peeling it away
from the body, making it look messy and broken. BlackBerry
may have planned to pop other ports underneath, but leaving
it as it is just seems careless.
Display
The 5-inch display has a 1,280x720-pixel resolution, giving a
pixel density of 295 pixels per inch. That's a fair step down
from Full HD displays seen on the HTC One or Galaxy S4,
but in everyday use I doubt you'd notice much difference.
Even when you get up close, icons and text remain sharp,
with little to no fuzziness around the edges. It has good
colours too, with deep black levels for satisfying contrast. It'll
cope well with playing back some YouTube clips when you're
relaxing after your big presentation to the board members.
It has good colours, deep black levels, and icons and text are
sharp.
It's let down though by its brightness, which is far from
impressive. Even with the screen ramped to the max, it still
seemed a little dim, and holding it against other phones --
particularly the iPhone 5C -- it looked pretty disappointing. If
you do a lot of work under harsh office lights or bright
sunlight, it might be a nuisance.
See pics after cut

D pics

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