BlackBerry Z30 review

Z30 BLACKBERRY OS

BlackBerry OS 10.2 introduces several welcome new features and changes over the previous version. The biggest is Priority Hub, a dedicated inbox for your emails, tests and BBM messages. It’s instantly accessible from any part of the operating system with a swipe gesture, with the ability to preview messages as they come in thanks to interactive pop-up notifications. There’s also a new attachments tab that lets you quickly find important files so you don’t have to trawl through your inbox. Finally, the lock screen now lets you preview messages without having to unlock the handset.

The onscreen keyboard is also a highlight. The larger screen makes it even easier to hit the right keys than on the Z10, with word predictions appearing above the next key that the phone thinks you’re going to hit. Swiping up chooses that word. We found it useful for longer words but less so for shorter ones, although it will save time once you get used to it.

The reliance on swipe gestures takes some getting used to if you’re moving from iOS or Android, but BlackBerry Z10 owners will feel right at home. Swipe left to open the messaging hub, or swipe right to open the app drawer. Recent apps are represented by thumbnails, which are frozen when you jump into a different app until you return to it. There’s the usual collection of productivity apps, including a document viewer that can view Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, a calendar that pulls events from all your synchronised accounts and the BlackBerry World app store for downloading more. It’s still far behind the iTunes store or Google Play Store in terms of variety, but most of the apps we use on a regular basis had a BlackBerry alternative, including train times and all the major social networks.

Annoyingly you’re still forced to install BlackBerry Link just to copy content from a PC to the phone, instead of dragging and dropping files as you can with Android devices. There is an option to bypass this, but it’s buried deep within the settings menu. It makes the Z30 awkward to use as a media player out of the box, even though the preloaded music and video apps work perfectly well.

Z30 CONCLUSION

BlackBerry has succeeded in producing a smartphone worthy of flagship status with the Z30, improving on the Z10 in almost every way and streamlining BB10 to make it more intuitive and productive to use. However, it costs almost as much as a Samsung Galaxy S4 and slightly more than an iPhone 5C. If you’re happy to use operating systems other than BB10 then the Z30 is difficult to recommend.