BlackBerry Z30 review : All you need to know

The BlackBerry Z10 was the first ever smartphone to run the Canadian firm's latest BlackBerry 10 software and was intended to reverse the firms ailing fortunes. Sadly, while the Z10's software boasted a host of enterprise-ready productivity and security features, sales never really took off and consumers and businesses continued to flock to competing Android and iOS handsets.

Putting aside the difficulty of any new mobile operating system to gain any headway in the current smartphone climate, a big reason for this was the Z10's slightly boxy, cheap and flimsy feeling design. One year on BlackBerry's attempted to rectify this, releasing its brand new flagship smartphone, the Z30.

However, with the phone arriving mere days after confirmation BlackBerry planned to be purchased by Fairfax Financial Holdings, a deal which has since fallen through, many have questioned whether the Z30 has any real long term appeal, or chance of helping the firm finally win back some of its former glory.

Design and build
Visually the Z30 looks very different to the Z10. Unlike the boxy Z10, the Z30 boasts a patterned removable backplate that wraps round the phones sides. It also has a metallic lining around its sides similar to those seen on Samsung's top-end Galaxy range of smartphones. This makes the phone look a little like a hybrid of the Galaxy S4 and Motorola Razr HD.

The Z30's also significantly bigger than its predecessor, measuring in at 141x72x9.4mm and weighing 170g. The Z10 by comparison measured 130x66x9mm and weighed 137g. The increased size and weight make the Z30 feel slightly chunky in hand and will likely be a sticking point for smartphone buyers used to smaller and lighter devices, like the Apple iPhone 5S. However, to those familiar with larger Android smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, the Z30, despite being 30g heavier, won't feel entirely uncomfortable in hand.

While the Z30 does feel heavy, it also feels very solidly built - especially compared to the Z10, which as well as being prone to picking up marks also boasted a backplate all too happy to detach from the phone when met with even the slightest force. The Z30's backplate is made of a significantly more robust polycarbonate and is far thicker. Testing the phone we found it made the device far more scratch resistant than other BlackBerry handsets and left us suitably sure it could survive the odd bump and scrape.

DISPLAY : The BlackBerry Z30 comes with a 5in 1280x720 294ppi, Super Amoled capacitive touchscreen. This makes it far bigger than the Z10, which boasted a 4.2in 1280x768 356ppi capacitive touchscreen. Considering the Z30's top-end £600 price tag we have to say we're a little disappointed BlackBerry chose not to load its flagship smartphone with a better display.

While the Z30's display is more than usable, being reasonably crisp, boasting nicely vibrant colours and brightness levels, it just doesn't match up to similarly priced competition. Running it head to head with the Galaxy S4's 5in full HD super Amoled 1920x1080 441 ppi display, we found the Z30 was outmatched in every way.

Operating system and software
The Z30 comes with BlackBerry's latest BlackBerry 10.2 (BB10.2) operating system preinstalled. BB10.2 adds a host of new features, the most notable of which are the BlackBerry Priority Hub and BBM Now.

BlackBerry Priority Hub builds adds a "learning" algorithm to the message collation service's core features. The algorithm is designed to let the phone learn what conversations and what people you deal with the most, and organises your inbox and notifications accordingly. BBM Now pushes a preview of any incoming message to the top of the user interface (UI) as it arrives. This means you can dismiss or reply to any BBM message without having to exit the app you're in.

Testing the feature, we were pleased with how well it worked and think it is a seriously nice addition. This is particularly true as BlackBerry's just radically extended BlackBerry Messenger's potential user base, rolling it out on Google Android and Apple iOS.

Past this the operating system comes with all the core security services seen in previous BB10 versions. The best of these are BlackBerry Protect and Balance.

BlackBerry Protect is a free service originally seen on the company's Z10 smartphone. The feature is designed to protect data stored on a lost or stolen device. One of the most useful features is the ability to track lost or stolen handsets. Protect makes it so Z30 users can track their lost phone using the View Location service. This lets users check an online map to see where their handset is.

As an added security feature Protect also lets Z30 owners remotely lock the lost device to display a message, meaning users can post a reward for their BlackBerry's return or leave a personal note for the thief.

PERFORMANCE: Balance is a sandboxing feature designed to boost BB10 handsets' BYOD appeal. It makes it so when connected to BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10 (BES10) users can create separate work and personal areas on the phone. The personal section of the phone is fully under the control of the phone's user, while the work side is controlled by the company IT department. This means the company can control what apps are installed and wipe or delete any company data on the work side, without affecting or controlling what happens on the personal side.

On paper this makes BB10 one of the most enterprise-ready operating systems available. However, its ability to shine is hampered by a few niggling problems. For a start, even one year on of using the OS, we still find it's slightly obtuse to use without a Qwerty keyboard. This is because the gesture interface is very different to those seen on most other mobile operating systems. For example, the OS doesn't have a home button, instead apps are excited by scrolling up from along the screen. While things like this are small, it does make initially using BB10 feel a little difficult and even seasoned BBOS users will take some time to get used to it.

We also found BB10's app offering is still quite sparse when compared to the more popular Android and iOS ecosystems. While this isn't too much of an issue for pure work users, as BB10's inbuilt productivity apps generally meet most businesses demands, it is for BYOD purposes, with the lack of entertainment apps and games making it feel a little boring.

Performance
The Z30 is powered by a dual-core 1.7GHz Krait Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and boasts 2GB of RAM. This means on paper the Z30 is nowhere near as highly specced as other top-end Android handsets, like the Galaxy S4 and Nexus 5, which both feature quad-core Qualcomm processors.

There aren't currently any reliable cross-platform benchmarking tools on BB10, but testing the Z30 we didn't really notice any performance issues. The Z30 loaded web pages hassle free and ran any app we threw at it. However, this could largely be because of the lack of demanding apps, like 3D games, available on BB10.

CAMERA: Camera

The only time we noticed a performance issue with the Z30 was when using its 8MP rear camera. On paper the rear camera is fairly standard, with the Z30 featuring an 8MP snapper complete with autofocus and LED flash. Sadly, at times we found the Z30 a little sluggish when in the camera mode and there was a noticeable lag between clicking the shutter icon and it actually taking a photo. This problem was so extreme that we found the Z30's HDR mode all but unusable.

Taken on the BlackBerry Z30

We also noticed the camera's autofocus was a little lacklustre. When taking photos we found it could take us several attempts to get the Z30 to focus on the object we were shooting and even then, when taking the photo at least a third of the time it was still slightly out of focus.

Battery and storage
The original Z10's battery life was an issue. The original BB10 flagship could run out of battery in a matter of hours when tasked with heavy use. BlackBerry's moved to fix this on the Z30 loading its new BB10 flagship with a larger 2880mAh Li-Ion battery it claims will last radically longer. Testing the Z30 we found it did perform far better than the Z10.

With normal use we found the Z30 lasted around a day and a half. Battery burning the Z30 by constantly looping a video file stored on the device we found the Z30 still performed fairly well. On our first burn the Z30 lasted six hours. During our second and third the device made it to a much more respectable seven, which is slightly above average for most current smartphones.

The Z30 only comes with 16GB of internal storage though luckily this can be upgraded to a maximum of 64GB using its microSD card slot.

Overall
The inherent security benefits of BES10 and BB10 mean for pure business use the Z30 is a very solid, albeit costly option. However, as we found with the Z10, as a BYOD device, its consumer offering is significantly less developed than competing ecosystems', like Android and iOS. This, combined with the fact the Z30 offers at best comparable and at times worse internal specifications than similarly priced Google and Apple smartphones, makes it hard to recommend the Z30 for anything but pure work use.

SPECIFICATION: Processor: Dual-core 1.7 GHz Krait, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro

Display: 5in, 720x1280, 294ppi, Super Amoled capacitive touchscreen
Storage: 16GB upgradable to 64GB via microSD, 2GB of RAM 
Camera: 8MP rear with autofocus and LED flash, 2MP front
Connectivity: 2G GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900; 3G, HSDPA 850, 900, 1900, 2100, 800; LTE 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2600 
Operating system: BB10.2
Dimensions: 141x72x9.4mm
Weight: 170g