The much-anticipated BlackBerry Z10 hit the T-Mobile network before it made its way to Verizon and AT&T, who launched the newly reinvented BlackBerry smartphone on March 22nd. That was the date upon which Amazon began offering the Z10 for both of those carriers, and the Verizon variant is selling at a discount. The BlackBerry Z10 which delivers the BlackBerry 10 operating system is currently priced at around $99 on contract at the Amazon Wireless store online.
The handset made history with BlackBerry, formerly RIM, by selling 1 million units in a single commercial order. The handset also hit the 1 million retail sales mark quicker than analysts predicted, and did so thanks to a newly revamped design. Gone is the familiar physical QWERTY keyboard of previous BlackBerry devices in place of a large high-resolution touch screen. The Z10 now looks more like a best selling Android or Apple phone, and contains a substantial amount of RAM memory, a microSD slot and an extremely high pixel density.
With a pixel density of 356 ppi, the 4.2 inch LCD screen receives an overall resolution of 768 x 1,280 pixels. The BlackBerry Z10 also offers a full 2.0 GB of RAM memory and a speedy 1.5 GHz dual core CPU. The phone is built with a comfortable, soft touch material on the back of the handset, making it less slip-probable than phones with a slick back plate. At 0.35 inches (9.0 mm) thick and 4.85 ounces (138 g) in weight, that handset is light and slim, with more than 16 million independent colors visible on the display.
BlackBerry has included proximity and light sensors for auto display dimming and auto brightness adjustment, and these battery enhancing sensors help the 1,800 mA battery on board the Z10 handset deliver 10.0 hours of talk time and 13.0 days of standby battery power. Like the typical smartphone, a video player, music player and web browser have been pre-installed and are ready for use out-of-the-box, and the handset is NFC capable as well.
A Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 system chip has been tasked with handling operations, and 16 GB of internal storage is present. The BlackBerry Z10 presents the closet shutterbug with a rear facing 8.0 megapixel camcorder, and front facing 2.0 megapixel chat cam. That rear camera records video in 1,920 x 1,080 pixels (1,080P HD resolution), and offers a built-in LED flash, f2.2 or sensor, autofocus, touch to focus and digital image stabilization. The front facing chat cam also offers video call support.
