The A7 isn't quite as fast as haswell yet, but the PA Semi guys did an amazing job designing the A7. Intel CPU perf isn't going anywhere fast and I think Apple has a good chance at catching them in the next few years with a cell phone SoC.
Are you really arguing that in the next few years, Apple will run a phone CPU that is as fast as Intel's notebook CPU? That is ridiculous. A7 is (very) roughly comparable to Bay Trail, which is roughly comparable to ULV Penryn, so we're talking about six years of performance gap there. What's worse for ultra-mobile performance, we're running up against physical barriers for process shrinks, so absent some huge advance in lithography (or some alternative), it seems unlikely that whatever goes in the iPhone in six years will even be as fast as ULV Haswell, much less whatever Intel will be shipping at that time.
None of that is to deny that A7 is quite impressive. I mean, between the A7 and iOS, they are performing comparable to Qualcomm SoCs running 75% higher clocks and twice as many CPU cores. But it'll be a long time before they "catch up" to where laptop hardware is today.
Yeah, that's exactly what I am arguing. It is speculation, so don't read too much into it, but I think that the A7 is much closer than most people would have considered possible 5 years ago.
In every one of the benchmarks above, excepting SunSpider, Safari 7 on the iPhone 5S is outperformed by Chrome 30 on an old Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ notebook I have laying around. Now, while that mostly serves to illustrate how utterly useless JS benchmarks are as a meaningful way to compare performance across radically different devices, it might also suggest the A7 isn't quite as "desktop class" as Apple wants you to believe - provided your "desktop" is from this decade, anyways.
We'll see how things go. I certainly can't disagree about the unexpected speed with which smartphone CPUs have advanced, and there is the argument that Windows on Bay Trail is "good enough" so maybe A7 or next year's A8 could be "good enough" for OS X on ARM, if such a thing comes to be (not holding my breath). It would certainly to be interesting to see some data on power vs. performance scaling of A7 if you could overclock it--I wonder how much perf it could pull at a 10W+ TDP.
Watt for watt x86 is more efficient than arm. Scaling it down is what's hard but if you look at ULV HW and new atom architectures it'll be intel bumping apple's game, not the other way around.
Well imagine if they take the amount they pay for a haswell chip and chop off 10% and spend the rest on a die twice the size. The A7 shows they aren't afraid to throw silicon at the thing.
They spend something like $175+ for the intel chips in the latest MacBook Air. The estimate by iSupply has the A7 costing under $20 from Samsung. What if intel designed a chip optimized to their software and ended up with a chip twice the size?
They don't need to be as fast. Just fast enough to run the OS and apps well. For most users a notebook running Sandybridge is more than enough for day to day tasks. No reason to think that Apple couldn't make a quad core A based chip in a couple more years that could run a Macbook Air just fine.
I don't think Apple has to catch up with Intel in the future though, they just have to hit some minimum performance threshold to make the platform viable.
Put another way, there are benchmarks that place the A7 as comparable to, in some ways, a 2009 MBP; that's not a 6 year delta, anymore, but a 3 year delta. Now imagine the A8; will it be comparable to a 2012 MBA, shrinking the gap to a 2 year delta?
Also don't forget that Apple is on a fairly large 28nm process right now, and could conceivably move to 24nm or 20nm in the next two years, as well.
It's still much much slower than a sub 100 dollar Haswell or Ivy, or Sandy, or Arrandale chip. It's barely past a $37 USD Atom Silvermont-chip on an unoptimized test/devel platform, which scored higher in Octane v1, as well as lower (better) in Kraken 1.1. So it's probably just on par.
Apple is not in the position going head to head with Intel in terms of performance and features and to keep up with them, that's why they switched to Intel when IBM and Freescale didn't want to try in the desktop and notebook space any more. They would lag process node, performance, and so on if they tired to use it in desktops and their desktop replacement notebooks. If 15W Haswell chips fits the space, which in the 11 uses a smaller battery than the iPad why would they kill the performance of it too? There is also the 4.5W SDP if they wish to go lower power. Can they compete with it with a custom chip? No they can't, and even Intel's drivers are so much better for OS X than the PowerVR drivers for iOS which doesn't support the things needed on the desktop.
Well, if we're talking A7 here, the iPad Air has a 32.4 Wh battery and the MacBook Air (11-inch, mid 2013) packs 38 Wh and gets an hour less running time. So considering that the iPad Air has exactly 3x more pixels to deal with, that's not too shabby in terms of efficiency.
Where do you see the Macbook Air(mid-2013) getting an hour less running time than the iPad Air? The Apple website says 10 hours of battery life for the iPad Air, but it said 10 hours of use for the iPad 4 too, and in Anandtech's tests, the 11" Macbook Air(mid-2013) beats the ipad 4 by more than 1.5 hours when they're used in a similar test. It's likely that Apple's own tests assume considerably more intensive use for the Macbook AIr, and in any case their battery life numbers aren't comparable between tablet and notebook.
Sorry referred to iPad third and fourth gen, 42.5 Wh battery. The 2010-2012 MacBook Air 11 had a 35Wh battery, the late 2013 MacBook Air 11.6 have a 38Wh battery.
It's worth noting that a portion of the iPhone's lead may be due to the latest iOS Safari JavaScript engine's...we'll say "focused optimization." Compare the iPhone 5C's results on iOS 7 to the iPhone 5's results on iOS 6 (remember, it's exactly the same hardware): http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-re... 20-30% gains in Sunspider and Kraken, and a whopping 70% in Octane. I don't mean to suggest the A7 isn't a great SoC - by all means, it's a technical marvel, especially for a company with such a nascent chip design division - but trying to draw meaningful performance comparisons across CPU architectures, operating systems, and browsers with JavaScript benchmarks is inane.
20-30% and 70% gains from a simple OS update. That's massive. Anand should have done a better job pointing this out. A7's so called stellar performance is certainly less stellar now considering OS improvements.
It's not specific to Apple. When it just came out, my Nexus 4 scored 1200 on Octane using Chrome 18 on Android 4.2. It now scores 2400 on Android 4.3 and Chrome 30. Javascript benchmarks are useless unless the exact same OS and Javascript engine (including engine version as well as CPU architecture/version) are being used.
Some of your comments are good, some, not so much. QUESTION; why would anyone load an Android port of Skype when its available as a native app which runs fantastic! WEB SPEED; you are throwing numbers showing the Apple browser as "much faster", actually considerably faster a reader would think? All anyone has to do is jump on YouTube and see side-by-side comparison of the web browser "user" experience and they clearly don't support your numbers! I urge anyone to simply watch these videos and watch read this article again, you will scratch your head in confusion! Second point, many web pages do not work on the iPhone because of NO Flash support. Don't you think that is an important "user" experience point to raise???? COMMENT; I can't understand why an author such as yourself would slant such information. Users look to these type articles for truthful guidance, not slanted information such as this? Lets call a spade a spade, you are pro iPhone, I hope most people get that?
Well, Skype for BB10 is made available in the store but it is essentially a repackaged Android app running on the Android runtime inside BB10. Just because something is available in Blackberry World doesn't mean it is a native app. Android runtime is not for sideloads only. For example, Kindle is also available in the BB World and it is again an Android port. Native apps are apps that are written using BB10 APIs using say Cascades, and Skype (and Kindle and many others) are not.
Aye -- it's even better now after Microsoft submitted the JellyBean version of Skype to the store yesterday. I'd still prefer a native app mind (as Skype does not use Enter to send messages, which feels at odds with all the native apps, and there are no cascades to go back with), but apparently that is on the way given the Skype app's "preview" tag, even after this latest update.
I've got a Z10 that I use as my daily driver, with a Note 2 kept nearby, and an S-ATIV just to play with as an alternative.
BB OS10 is a very nice OS in search of a device with better hardware specs, especially a device with a better camera.
Even so, on the Z10 they largely got it right. It has a very logical, easy to use OS, and they included a Micro-SDXC storage slot and a removable battery - things that most other manufacturers maddeningly refuse to accept is required kit for a flagship phone.
The audio is very good and is profiled just right for commuting as it cuts through road noise and rumble very well without overdoing it.
The baked-in software applet called the Hub is one swipe away and is absolute genius for consolidating all communications in one place. And I mean ALL communications - it leaves nothing out - notifications, emails, SMS, etc.
On the list of things that I find welcoming in OS 10.2 are multiple alarms. I have an older feature phone that I am currently using for just this purpose and will continue to do so, but it's nice that the Z10 can do this for me now while I'm on the road.
The Z10's world clock was already awesome. The best I've ever seen. I literally have family, friends, and business contacts across the world on 4 continents and a few islands, so it's worth mentioning that this feature beats my Samsung phones (Android and WinPhone8) very easily. I've got a dozen time zones entered (I think you can enter even more), and it shows up as a very handy, space efficient, easy to read list.
Aside from the crummy camera, the biggest thing missing is exFAT support. It is uncertain at the moment whether 10.2 will fix this. Hopefully this update will do the trick.
To describe the problem as it is in 10.1 and previous versions: You can use a 64GB card no problem (I do). But, you must format it as FAT32 for it to be recognized. You cannot format it exFAT. Thus you cannot use files larger than 4GB. And you cannot swap the card from the Z10 to another device, such as to a Sammy Note 2 or S-ATIV.
As I said, hopefully Blackberry nailed it on this one. If so, it would bring them a little bit more credibility. But overall, they really need to get the OS on a true flagship quality device. The Z10 is oh-so-close, but they really need to up their game on the camera and the internal specs.
They just stepped up the game with the Z30 - more power, more capabilities, great sound and BB 10.2 The only thing I hate about it is that I don't have one, yet!
My BB 10.2 upgrade went without a problem. Still no exFAT support for the Micro-SD card.
The baked-in WiFi connection to PC function is nice and works well with Windows Explorer. I'm not sure if that is new or just something that I never turned on before - probably the latter. It is username and password protected (you log in on the Windows side), which is also a good feature, and you can check a box for Windows to just remember those credentials.
It's also notable that just like Android, the BB OS10 can natively play FLAC lossless audio files. That is one area where BB OS10 beats WinPhone8. There isn't any 3rd party FLAC codec available for WinPhone 8 either.
It's also notable that just like Android, the BB OS10 can natively play WMA-LossLess audio files. That is one area where BB OS10 beats iOS.
The Micro-SD slot on the Z10 is completely hot-swappable.
I've rarely if ever had a crash on a BB OS10 or Android device. I can't remember ever having one, but I'm sure I must have at some point.
The ATIV-S WinPhone 8 crashed multiple times in one day alone. All crashes were in relation to swapping the Micro-SD chip in and out of the phone. I still like it, but it's the same old 3/4 baked Windows that we all know from way back when.
Why is Anand so anti BlackBerry. I mean seriously the Lumia 900 got a full review when Windows Phone 7 had like 0% market share and you can't even get a review on a single BlackBerry 10 phone in almost a year??
I too, like hrrmph, use a Z10 as my daily driver (my alternate phone being a Lumia 820, and before that, a Pre3), and I too think BlackBerry nailed it with BB10.
The cascades interface makes apps a joy to navigate (and has turned one-handed use into a lazy habit of mine), the incredibly strong HTML5 compatibility on the browser (performance not bad given the Z10's Snapdragon S4 Plus) also means it loads next to anything I throw at it, the OS is great at handling several apps at once with apps truly resuming and suspending in the background (which adds to the 'flow' moniker BB give the OS).
The Android runtime is pretty good now, too, with Flipboard and Skype being the two Jellybean apps I've tried (Skype recently got updated to the JellyBean version yesterday). I'm surprised at how good the hardware acceleration is, and how well integrated the apps are with the rest of the OS (Flipboard even seems to maintain the stock Android browser when you open a link within a featured article).
As also mentioned, the BB Hub is near essential to my day-to-day communications -- I really like how it loads all your communications apps in the same place, with the option to filter between each one through a single swipe very handy too. It's all integrated really well. The way you can also share, say, a photo on Twitter within one app and have the entire compose window from your Twitter app (like Blaq) slide in just for that share is really neat as well.
One thing that has surprised me is app support. Yes, the ecosystem is no Android or iOS, but to me I've found it miles beyond Windows Phone, especially in terms of games where a lot of developers have released plenty of great ports on the platform thanks to BB making sure the right tools for porting have been made available to developers to bring their games over at very low cost. And the consistency between apps is a plus, as a lot of Windows Phone apps still see this split between apps that also target Windows Phone 7, those which are Windows Phone 8 only and those with have two separate versions for both.
I could easily get by with the other mobile OSes I've tried, mind, but BB10 pulls things off in such an elegant way which hasn't been done since webOS. It really feels great navigating through the UI with these gestures, without any feelings of interruption or load waits (particularly great when you swipe right to go back one cascade, or swipe left/right to go back and forth from your BB Hub communication and whatever you were on last).
Like others I too would like to see some BB10 coverage on the site -- it's a really great OS, and far exceeded my expectations, even on what is year-old hardware (I only bought a Z10 a couple of months back).
Finally a BlackBerry 10 article. Thank you for doing at least something on a platform I care about. Would like to see a Z30 article soon too, please. There was a PlayBook article on launch day, so why not a phone article?
Anyway, given that the CPU in the Z10 is less powerful than the Nexus 4 (8960 vs. APQ8064 Pro), I think it made a great showing in the benchmarks.
I've owned a Z10 since Feb 12 of 2012 so a week or so after launch. It really is a great phone and still getting better with these software updates. Its also my daily driver and I do IT support. Our current environment at our lawfirm has about 125 BB10 devices active aswell as older berries and Iphones on Mobile Iron, so I work with the phones alot and for a Generation 1 product its great.
I installed the 10.2 OS update this weekend and loving the update of the andriod runtime skype is like 100x better as with the rest of the andriod apps. Battery life also see a nice little boost with this update.
Phone has all the apps that I need I don't use Twiiter, instagram,viber the latter two you can side the andriod ports and they work.
I would love to see a Z30 review on this site also.
Not buying a 4 inch device, but with the performance gap Apple has each generation it would be hard to pass up a 5 inch version. It's like they are a year ahead with their SOCs.
I guess I can stop complaining about how Anand never did a BB OS 6, 7 or 10 device review. Not a single one. But hey a web browsing benchmark a few years down the road doesn't hurt, right?
It may seem like a minor nitpick but it just bugs me when you type Blackberry instead of BlackBerry. You don't call an iPhone an Iphone, do you?
To me, not acknowledging the proper spelling of the company's name or product just annoys the heck out of me. Yes it's one letter not capitalized, but it still bugs me.
paid reviewer, that's why! but anyhow, their review ain't bias too much and very informative. Just don't take it too seriously. read more from other site, compare, then go to the shop and hold or play with the real stuff, then you'll know better.
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xinthius - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Too little too late.CecileWamsley - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Grace got a stunning silver Mercedes E-Class Diesel from only workin parttime on a computer. more info here... http://smal.ly/8wUo2vFunct - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
still blown away by that iPhone 5s speed... wow. They really need to put that into a MacBook Air. with iOS built for ARM.vFunct - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
^OS X built for ARMxinthius - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Give it a few years if the pace of development for ARM chips continues.Loki726 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
The A7 isn't quite as fast as haswell yet, but the PA Semi guys did an amazing job designing the A7. Intel CPU perf isn't going anywhere fast and I think Apple has a good chance at catching them in the next few years with a cell phone SoC.teiglin - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Are you really arguing that in the next few years, Apple will run a phone CPU that is as fast as Intel's notebook CPU? That is ridiculous. A7 is (very) roughly comparable to Bay Trail, which is roughly comparable to ULV Penryn, so we're talking about six years of performance gap there. What's worse for ultra-mobile performance, we're running up against physical barriers for process shrinks, so absent some huge advance in lithography (or some alternative), it seems unlikely that whatever goes in the iPhone in six years will even be as fast as ULV Haswell, much less whatever Intel will be shipping at that time.None of that is to deny that A7 is quite impressive. I mean, between the A7 and iOS, they are performing comparable to Qualcomm SoCs running 75% higher clocks and twice as many CPU cores. But it'll be a long time before they "catch up" to where laptop hardware is today.
Loki726 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Yeah, that's exactly what I am arguing. It is speculation, so don't read too much into it, but I think that the A7 is much closer than most people would have considered possible 5 years ago.lowlymarine - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
In every one of the benchmarks above, excepting SunSpider, Safari 7 on the iPhone 5S is outperformed by Chrome 30 on an old Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ notebook I have laying around. Now, while that mostly serves to illustrate how utterly useless JS benchmarks are as a meaningful way to compare performance across radically different devices, it might also suggest the A7 isn't quite as "desktop class" as Apple wants you to believe - provided your "desktop" is from this decade, anyways.teiglin - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Well, I'll take the odds on that bet. ;)We'll see how things go. I certainly can't disagree about the unexpected speed with which smartphone CPUs have advanced, and there is the argument that Windows on Bay Trail is "good enough" so maybe A7 or next year's A8 could be "good enough" for OS X on ARM, if such a thing comes to be (not holding my breath). It would certainly to be interesting to see some data on power vs. performance scaling of A7 if you could overclock it--I wonder how much perf it could pull at a 10W+ TDP.
willis936 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Watt for watt x86 is more efficient than arm. Scaling it down is what's hard but if you look at ULV HW and new atom architectures it'll be intel bumping apple's game, not the other way around.errorr - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Well imagine if they take the amount they pay for a haswell chip and chop off 10% and spend the rest on a die twice the size. The A7 shows they aren't afraid to throw silicon at the thing.They spend something like $175+ for the intel chips in the latest MacBook Air. The estimate by iSupply has the A7 costing under $20 from Samsung. What if intel designed a chip optimized to their software and ended up with a chip twice the size?
Jumangi - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
They don't need to be as fast. Just fast enough to run the OS and apps well. For most users a notebook running Sandybridge is more than enough for day to day tasks. No reason to think that Apple couldn't make a quad core A based chip in a couple more years that could run a Macbook Air just fine.michael2k - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
I don't think Apple has to catch up with Intel in the future though, they just have to hit some minimum performance threshold to make the platform viable.Put another way, there are benchmarks that place the A7 as comparable to, in some ways, a 2009 MBP; that's not a 6 year delta, anymore, but a 3 year delta. Now imagine the A8; will it be comparable to a 2012 MBA, shrinking the gap to a 2 year delta?
Also don't forget that Apple is on a fairly large 28nm process right now, and could conceivably move to 24nm or 20nm in the next two years, as well.
Penti - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
It's still much much slower than a sub 100 dollar Haswell or Ivy, or Sandy, or Arrandale chip. It's barely past a $37 USD Atom Silvermont-chip on an unoptimized test/devel platform, which scored higher in Octane v1, as well as lower (better) in Kraken 1.1. So it's probably just on par.Apple is not in the position going head to head with Intel in terms of performance and features and to keep up with them, that's why they switched to Intel when IBM and Freescale didn't want to try in the desktop and notebook space any more. They would lag process node, performance, and so on if they tired to use it in desktops and their desktop replacement notebooks. If 15W Haswell chips fits the space, which in the 11 uses a smaller battery than the iPad why would they kill the performance of it too? There is also the 4.5W SDP if they wish to go lower power. Can they compete with it with a custom chip? No they can't, and even Intel's drivers are so much better for OS X than the PowerVR drivers for iOS which doesn't support the things needed on the desktop.
repoman27 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Well, if we're talking A7 here, the iPad Air has a 32.4 Wh battery and the MacBook Air (11-inch, mid 2013) packs 38 Wh and gets an hour less running time. So considering that the iPad Air has exactly 3x more pixels to deal with, that's not too shabby in terms of efficiency.Sancus - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Where do you see the Macbook Air(mid-2013) getting an hour less running time than the iPad Air? The Apple website says 10 hours of battery life for the iPad Air, but it said 10 hours of use for the iPad 4 too, and in Anandtech's tests, the 11" Macbook Air(mid-2013) beats the ipad 4 by more than 1.5 hours when they're used in a similar test. It's likely that Apple's own tests assume considerably more intensive use for the Macbook AIr, and in any case their battery life numbers aren't comparable between tablet and notebook.Penti - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Sorry referred to iPad third and fourth gen, 42.5 Wh battery. The 2010-2012 MacBook Air 11 had a 35Wh battery, the late 2013 MacBook Air 11.6 have a 38Wh battery.lowlymarine - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
It's worth noting that a portion of the iPhone's lead may be due to the latest iOS Safari JavaScript engine's...we'll say "focused optimization." Compare the iPhone 5C's results on iOS 7 to the iPhone 5's results on iOS 6 (remember, it's exactly the same hardware):http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-re...
20-30% gains in Sunspider and Kraken, and a whopping 70% in Octane. I don't mean to suggest the A7 isn't a great SoC - by all means, it's a technical marvel, especially for a company with such a nascent chip design division - but trying to draw meaningful performance comparisons across CPU architectures, operating systems, and browsers with JavaScript benchmarks is inane.
ananduser - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
20-30% and 70% gains from a simple OS update. That's massive. Anand should have done a better job pointing this out. A7's so called stellar performance is certainly less stellar now considering OS improvements.madmilk - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
It's not specific to Apple. When it just came out, my Nexus 4 scored 1200 on Octane using Chrome 18 on Android 4.2. It now scores 2400 on Android 4.3 and Chrome 30. Javascript benchmarks are useless unless the exact same OS and Javascript engine (including engine version as well as CPU architecture/version) are being used.Walterb - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Some of your comments are good, some, not so much.QUESTION; why would anyone load an Android port of Skype when its available as a native app which runs fantastic!
WEB SPEED; you are throwing numbers showing the Apple browser as "much faster", actually considerably faster a reader would think? All anyone has to do is jump on YouTube and see side-by-side comparison of the web browser "user" experience and they clearly don't support your numbers! I urge anyone to simply watch these videos and watch read this article again, you will scratch your head in confusion! Second point, many web pages do not work on the iPhone because of NO Flash support. Don't you think that is an important "user" experience point to raise????
COMMENT; I can't understand why an author such as yourself would slant such information. Users look to these type articles for truthful guidance, not slanted information such as this? Lets call a spade a spade, you are pro iPhone, I hope most people get that?
codedivine - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Skype is not yet a native app, it runs on the Android runtime in BB10.xdrol - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Then what is this: http://www.skype.com/hu/download-skype/skype-for-b...codedivine - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Well, Skype for BB10 is made available in the store but it is essentially a repackaged Android app running on the Android runtime inside BB10. Just because something is available in Blackberry World doesn't mean it is a native app. Android runtime is not for sideloads only. For example, Kindle is also available in the BB World and it is again an Android port. Native apps are apps that are written using BB10 APIs using say Cascades, and Skype (and Kindle and many others) are not.Walterb - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Your right, it is repackaged android port. It runs smooth, what can I say. The user experience using Skype is great and that's what matters.fronkhead - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Aye -- it's even better now after Microsoft submitted the JellyBean version of Skype to the store yesterday. I'd still prefer a native app mind (as Skype does not use Enter to send messages, which feels at odds with all the native apps, and there are no cascades to go back with), but apparently that is on the way given the Skype app's "preview" tag, even after this latest update.hrrmph - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
I've got a Z10 that I use as my daily driver, with a Note 2 kept nearby, and an S-ATIV just to play with as an alternative.BB OS10 is a very nice OS in search of a device with better hardware specs, especially a device with a better camera.
Even so, on the Z10 they largely got it right. It has a very logical, easy to use OS, and they included a Micro-SDXC storage slot and a removable battery - things that most other manufacturers maddeningly refuse to accept is required kit for a flagship phone.
The audio is very good and is profiled just right for commuting as it cuts through road noise and rumble very well without overdoing it.
The baked-in software applet called the Hub is one swipe away and is absolute genius for consolidating all communications in one place. And I mean ALL communications - it leaves nothing out - notifications, emails, SMS, etc.
On the list of things that I find welcoming in OS 10.2 are multiple alarms. I have an older feature phone that I am currently using for just this purpose and will continue to do so, but it's nice that the Z10 can do this for me now while I'm on the road.
The Z10's world clock was already awesome. The best I've ever seen. I literally have family, friends, and business contacts across the world on 4 continents and a few islands, so it's worth mentioning that this feature beats my Samsung phones (Android and WinPhone8) very easily. I've got a dozen time zones entered (I think you can enter even more), and it shows up as a very handy, space efficient, easy to read list.
Aside from the crummy camera, the biggest thing missing is exFAT support. It is uncertain at the moment whether 10.2 will fix this. Hopefully this update will do the trick.
To describe the problem as it is in 10.1 and previous versions: You can use a 64GB card no problem (I do). But, you must format it as FAT32 for it to be recognized. You cannot format it exFAT. Thus you cannot use files larger than 4GB. And you cannot swap the card from the Z10 to another device, such as to a Sammy Note 2 or S-ATIV.
As I said, hopefully Blackberry nailed it on this one. If so, it would bring them a little bit more credibility. But overall, they really need to get the OS on a true flagship quality device. The Z10 is oh-so-close, but they really need to up their game on the camera and the internal specs.
Walterb - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
They just stepped up the game with the Z30 - more power, more capabilities, great sound and BB 10.2The only thing I hate about it is that I don't have one, yet!
hrrmph - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
My BB 10.2 upgrade went without a problem. Still no exFAT support for the Micro-SD card.The baked-in WiFi connection to PC function is nice and works well with Windows Explorer. I'm not sure if that is new or just something that I never turned on before - probably the latter. It is username and password protected (you log in on the Windows side), which is also a good feature, and you can check a box for Windows to just remember those credentials.
It's also notable that just like Android, the BB OS10 can natively play FLAC lossless audio files. That is one area where BB OS10 beats WinPhone8. There isn't any 3rd party FLAC codec available for WinPhone 8 either.
It's also notable that just like Android, the BB OS10 can natively play WMA-LossLess audio files. That is one area where BB OS10 beats iOS.
The Micro-SD slot on the Z10 is completely hot-swappable.
I've rarely if ever had a crash on a BB OS10 or Android device. I can't remember ever having one, but I'm sure I must have at some point.
The ATIV-S WinPhone 8 crashed multiple times in one day alone. All crashes were in relation to swapping the Micro-SD chip in and out of the phone. I still like it, but it's the same old 3/4 baked Windows that we all know from way back when.
kishorshack - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Where is Note 3 in those comparison charts??meacupla - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
why does anandtech even bother with these dead platforms?even the windows phone is more interesting than BB.
Jtaylor1986 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Why do you read and post then troll? Move along...Jtaylor1986 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
More BlackBerry coverage please! A Z30 review would be nice since there are still a hardcore audience of fans out there.Jtaylor1986 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Why is Anand so anti BlackBerry. I mean seriously the Lumia 900 got a full review when Windows Phone 7 had like 0% market share and you can't even get a review on a single BlackBerry 10 phone in almost a year??Jtaylor1986 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Oh and for the record Windows Phone 7 was a dead platform since they completed changed the operating system for Windows Phone 8.fronkhead - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
I too, like hrrmph, use a Z10 as my daily driver (my alternate phone being a Lumia 820, and before that, a Pre3), and I too think BlackBerry nailed it with BB10.The cascades interface makes apps a joy to navigate (and has turned one-handed use into a lazy habit of mine), the incredibly strong HTML5 compatibility on the browser (performance not bad given the Z10's Snapdragon S4 Plus) also means it loads next to anything I throw at it, the OS is great at handling several apps at once with apps truly resuming and suspending in the background (which adds to the 'flow' moniker BB give the OS).
The Android runtime is pretty good now, too, with Flipboard and Skype being the two Jellybean apps I've tried (Skype recently got updated to the JellyBean version yesterday). I'm surprised at how good the hardware acceleration is, and how well integrated the apps are with the rest of the OS (Flipboard even seems to maintain the stock Android browser when you open a link within a featured article).
As also mentioned, the BB Hub is near essential to my day-to-day communications -- I really like how it loads all your communications apps in the same place, with the option to filter between each one through a single swipe very handy too. It's all integrated really well. The way you can also share, say, a photo on Twitter within one app and have the entire compose window from your Twitter app (like Blaq) slide in just for that share is really neat as well.
One thing that has surprised me is app support. Yes, the ecosystem is no Android or iOS, but to me I've found it miles beyond Windows Phone, especially in terms of games where a lot of developers have released plenty of great ports on the platform thanks to BB making sure the right tools for porting have been made available to developers to bring their games over at very low cost. And the consistency between apps is a plus, as a lot of Windows Phone apps still see this split between apps that also target Windows Phone 7, those which are Windows Phone 8 only and those with have two separate versions for both.
I could easily get by with the other mobile OSes I've tried, mind, but BB10 pulls things off in such an elegant way which hasn't been done since webOS. It really feels great navigating through the UI with these gestures, without any feelings of interruption or load waits (particularly great when you swipe right to go back one cascade, or swipe left/right to go back and forth from your BB Hub communication and whatever you were on last).
Like others I too would like to see some BB10 coverage on the site -- it's a really great OS, and far exceeded my expectations, even on what is year-old hardware (I only bought a Z10 a couple of months back).
dave_s25 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Finally a BlackBerry 10 article. Thank you for doing at least something on a platform I care about. Would like to see a Z30 article soon too, please. There was a PlayBook article on launch day, so why not a phone article?Anyway, given that the CPU in the Z10 is less powerful than the Nexus 4 (8960 vs. APQ8064 Pro), I think it made a great showing in the benchmarks.
Makaveli - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
I agree with fronkhead, hrrmph, dave_s25.I've owned a Z10 since Feb 12 of 2012 so a week or so after launch. It really is a great phone and still getting better with these software updates. Its also my daily driver and I do IT support. Our current environment at our lawfirm has about 125 BB10 devices active aswell as older berries and Iphones on Mobile Iron, so I work with the phones alot and for a Generation 1 product its great.
I installed the 10.2 OS update this weekend and loving the update of the andriod runtime skype is like 100x better as with the rest of the andriod apps. Battery life also see a nice little boost with this update.
Phone has all the apps that I need I don't use Twiiter, instagram,viber the latter two you can side the andriod ports and they work.
I would love to see a Z30 review on this site also.
Sttm - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Not buying a 4 inch device, but with the performance gap Apple has each generation it would be hard to pass up a 5 inch version. It's like they are a year ahead with their SOCs.DukeN - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
I guess I can stop complaining about how Anand never did a BB OS 6, 7 or 10 device review. Not a single one. But hey a web browsing benchmark a few years down the road doesn't hurt, right?Vinny DePaul - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So iPhone still the king.Devo2007 - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
It may seem like a minor nitpick but it just bugs me when you type Blackberry instead of BlackBerry. You don't call an iPhone an Iphone, do you?To me, not acknowledging the proper spelling of the company's name or product just annoys the heck out of me. Yes it's one letter not capitalized, but it still bugs me.
-Picky Canadian
AbbyYen - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
paid reviewer, that's why!but anyhow, their review ain't bias too much and very informative.
Just don't take it too seriously. read more from other site, compare, then go to the shop and hold or play with the real stuff, then you'll know better.