The BlackBerry Z10 was anticipated for some time before it launched in March of this year for several reasons. BlackBerry, formerly RIM, has not been a significant player in the smartphone marketplace since 2007 when the Apple iPhone launched and started its monumental run. This year’s new BlackBerry delivers the BlackBerry 10 operating system, and forgoes the iconic physical QWERTY keyboard of previous BlackBerries for a totally touchscreen driven user interface.
Thus far there have been several significant signs which point to early success for BlackBerry, one of them being a record-breaking commercial sale for the handset. 1 million units of the BlackBerry Z10 handset were purchased by a single customer, a new sales record for the company. The handset has also sold more than 1.0 million retail units in the initial period of time which analysts were predicting 900,000 sales, another positive sign for the BlackBerry Z10.
Recent research from online ad company Chitika shows that mobile access on their ad platform across all mobile BlackBerry devices was approximately 2.65% of their total traffic the day before the BlackBerry Z10 launched. After that launch, all mobile BlackBerry device traffic on the Chitika ad network grew to 5.30%, an obvious sign that the BlackBerry Z10 single-handedly doubled BlackBerry’s presence. BlackBerry ad execs and shareholders must certainly be happy, as it appears that the initial acceptance of the 4G smartphone has been ensured.
The BlackBerry Z10 offers a large 4.2 inch LCD with 768 x 1,280 pixel resolution, and delivers a high-end pixel density at 356 pixels per inch. The handset also delivers a full 2.0 GB of RAM system memory under the hood, as well as 16 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for expansion. Slim and light for a 4G phone with such a large display, the BlackBerry Z10 weighs 4.85 ounces (138 g), and measures just 0.35 inches (9.0 mm) in thickness. More than 16 million colors are represented on that screen, and standard capacitive, multitouch gestures are used for navigation.
At approximately 25% better than average talk time for a 4G smartphone, the handset can register up to 10.0 hours of conversation from a full battery charge. The 1,800 mA battery can also provide 13.0 days of standby power, and the handset runs on the dual core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU. The system chip is a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 model, and the rear facing camcorder runs 8.0 megapixels. That rear snapper provides video capture at the rate of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (1,080P HD resolution), and a 2.0 megapixel chat cam on the front of the BlackBerry Z10 can also be used for video calls.
