BlackBerry
Z10

The Z10 saw BlackBerry taking the brave step to launch its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and software on a new smartphone model without the physical keyboard for which the company was famous. At the January 2013 launch event the company not only announced the Z10 but also the BlackBerry Q10 which had the familiar BlackBerry keyboard. However, it was the Z10 that the company focused its marketing around and which shipped to customers first. Company executives focused on the Z10 because its rivals were using touchscreen devices to successfully convert customers away from traditional BlackBerry devices. Also, once available, it became clear that the BlackBerry 10 touch interface was cramped on the Q10’s small 3.1-inch display compared with the much larger 4.2-inch display on the Z10. The new touchscreen interface on BlackBerry 10 had many innovative features to win over buyers. Notably a neat hub that combined email, calendar, and contacts into a single fluid experience. Unlike the earlier BlackBerry OS devices, BlackBerry 10 devices no longer required the corporate BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) in order to connect to corporate email although they were compatible with BES. Switching between applications was also fast and fluid. New users complained of an initial learning curve, with unique gestures such as the L-shaped swipe that was a core part of the user interface.  Alongside new BlackBerry 10 apps, the device also supported Android apps. In practice this capability was of limited use because BlackBerry only supported apps that ran on fully open-source versions of Android and not those that required the Google APIs and Google Play Services — originally called Android or Google Mobile Services — which were built into virtually every Android phone sold outside of China. BlackBerry 10 was based on the real-time QNX operating system that the company had acquired in 2010. QNX had previously been used on the Playbook tablet, but BlackBerry 10 had a completely new set of apps and user interface. In the 2020s, QNX continues to be used in the automotive sector.  The Z10’s hardware was a little old by the time it came to market. Featuring a modest sized and 768x1280 resolution screen and an older dual core Qualcomm S4 processor when quad core 800-series chipsets were common, the device was fast enough in use but not speedy. The exterior industrial design was also unexciting with extensive usage of black plastic which compared poorly with the aluminium shells used on most flagship rival models. Part of BlackBerry’s challenge with the Z10 and BlackBerry 10 was how long it had taken the company to get them to the market. The January launch event was almost exactly six years since the announcement of the original iPhone that had led a revolution in smartphone design. After the iPhone and Android’s arrival, Research in Motion (the company later re-branded as BlackBerry) had gone on to see record breaking BlackBerry shipments. Initially it had attempted to compete by tweaking classic BlackBerry operating system with devices such as the poorly received BlackBerry Storm. By the time the Z10 launched, BlackBerry was fighting a rear-guard action. Both the Z10 and BlackBerry 10 had a lot to offer with clever user interface design and a strong security focus. But back in 2013, there was less interest in privacy and security than there was five years later. Similarly, there was less need of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that had locked in BlackBerry customers five years earlier when the iPhone arrived. The Z10 would arguably have been a much more successful device if it had launched just a few years earlier. BlackBerry subsequently dropped BlackBerry 10 OS in favour of Android with the BlackBerry Priv and then exited the smartphone market entirely in September 2016.