This decade has seen a revolutionary change in the mobile industry. From dimensions, to form factor to radio frequencies, we have seen tremendous changes. Today, only 2 form factors are breathing in the industry, Full-touch and QWERTY. All other concepts like clamshell, slider, candy bar became obsolete and are no more surviving. Today is the age of gesture based systems and bringing a revolution in this industry is brand new BlackBerry 10 OS.

QWERTY’s have their own stature in this world dominated by the touch screens. The confidence of typing and message composition is uncomparable and no touch screen can give such a typing experience no matter how advanced virtual keyboards have become. The speed, accuracy and business-friendly ergonomics achieved from QWERTY devices are far more superior and preferred over touchscreens. And defending the honor of QWERTY smartphones is the BlackBerry Q10 – the pinnacle of Computer-like keyboard embedded phone evolution right now. BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion is the pioneer of QWERTY concept in the industry and has been hugely popular among Businessmen and even youth. The sales figure of the company might have seen a tremendous decline since past years but their customer base is has now become stagnant and the sting of gesture based BB10 OS with the company’s hardware expertise promises to woo the hands of its lost customer base.

The swipe-driven BB10 OS provides plenty of new, exciting ways of interacting with the device, while keyboard shortcuts and Instant Actions will add extra speed and flexibility but, considering the Q10 is a phone for loyal BlackBerry users, old habits will have to be broken. Here’s what they’ll be getting in return with the BlackBerry Q10.

• Four-row hardware QWERTY keyboard
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, tri/quad-band UMTS/HSPA, 100 Mbps LTE
• 3.1″ 16M-color 720p (720 x 720 pixels) Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
• Dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait, 2GB RAM, Adreno 225 (LTE version) /Dual-core 1.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A9, 2GB RAM, PowerVR SGX544 (non-LTE)
• BlackBerry 10.1 OS; Office document editor
• BlackBerry Hub is a unified inbox of all your communication and social networking accounts
• BBM with video chat and screen sharing
• Impressively good 8 MP auto-focus camera with face detection and Time Shift; LED flash
• Full HD (1080p) video recording at 30fps; 720p on the front-facing camera
• 2MP front facing camera
• 16GB of storage, microSD card slot; Dropbox and Box.NET integration
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot; Wi-Fi sync
• Bluetooth 4.0
• NFC
• standard microUSB port, microHDMI
• 3.5mm audio jack
• GPS receiver with A-GPS

Well, the coin has another phase too. BlackBerry 10, being a gesture heavy OS, has a steep learning curve. BlackBerry has never given FM radio in its top end phones and same is what expected from Q10.

Seems like, Canadians are back into business, but with a massive change. Its not a Ctrl+C job. At first sight, the phone might resemble to the iconic BlackBerry Bold 9900. However, there has been a hell lot of eliminations and additions as well. The call key, end key, menu key and the optical trackpad seems no more a good taste for the company. The elimination of these keys have been a result of increased screen size which is now lengthier, making a square.

This phone adds a lot of “Firsts” to its name. BlackBerry Q10 is the world’s first QWERTY phone in the world with a dual-core brain and sport a HD display with 328ppi.2GB RAM is something, again seen for the first time in a QWERTY phone.

Lets focus on the build quality first, which is a noteworthy in Q10. We all know that Q10 is surprisingly pricier than the full touch based Z10, but is it just the difference of full touch and touch & type. The phone made of unibody stailess steel, using a special technique called Physical Vapour deposition. The body is now scratchless. The camera lens has been slightly pressed into the whole to avoid scratches when kept on table. So you can take clear and sharp images even after a year long of usage.

The phone comes loaded with 3 microphones, again, a FIRST in the industry. This helps in powerful noise cancellation and lets the 3^rd person hear your voice with crystal clear sharpness. So these are certain things we expected in BlackBerry Z10, and so all these make BlackBerry Q10 a more expensive and efficient device.

The keyboard, in which BlackBerry is champion, has been made more ergonomic. Keys are now 3% larger than those seen on Bold 9900. The rows are now flat, however, arc shaped rows would have been a welcome. The metal frame running all around the chassis is gone – that’s one accent less for an understated but altogether more compelling look. Overall, the Q10 is betting on cleaner lines and more simplified styling. The back panel is a single piece of some sort of composite material, developed by BlackBerry engineers. It has an extra pleasant rubbery finish, as opposed to a similarly looking carbon fibre inset in the Bold Touch 9900, which was at odds with the surrounding material.

The BlackBerry Q10 isn’t as powerful as the full-touch BlackBerry Z10, and it doesn’t need to be. The Q10 has a power-saving 3.1″ Super AMOLED display at 720 x 720 pixels, which won’t put a massive strain on the GPU either. Again, AMOLED technology debuts on a BlackBerry phone, with its best contrast and sunlight legibility.

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About the author

Rajarshi
Rajarshi Bose is Technical Writer / Managing Editor at Gadget Tech. He has pursued his career in IT field. Currently, he is working as Smartphone consultant in BlackBerry Inc. He has unbeatable knowledge of smartphones and has expertise in BlackBerry and Android ecosystems. He has rich experience of over 5 years in smartphone technology.