[discobiscuit]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Interesting. You mentioned its not available off the shelf in Hyderabad. which places have you looked?

Iam a power user and this would definetly help but, iam mostly near a charge point over the week so it wont be that useful but, during those infrequent full day meetings, travel or simply when iam riding/driving would be great help.

I dont mind buying this online from a reliable source or in Hyderabad, do keep me posted if you find a place where its available.

The idea of swapping out a half used battery for a full battery is one of the biggest advantages of phones like BBs where battery swapping is possible. Drain both your batteries out? No problem! Can charge both at the same time

I have searched in the Chirag Ali lane Area, Abids. Will let you know once I get my hands on one. The one for Z10 is different since the Z10 rocks a different battery. Maybe also marginally less expensive.

Originally Posted by akshay1234

Or you can get something like this
http://www.sony.co.in/product/cp-els

It doesn't charge that quickly, but it was a godsend when my damn 9900 was almost out of battery.

I've seen those before. But you will always have something hanging on the side as you are charging your phone. The link you posted is of a 2000mah, and the battery of the q10; for example, is 2100mah. So it wont even provide a full charge.

If swapping batteries is not possible on your phone, the Trent Phone charger is pretty awesome with 15,000mah. Then again, availability in India can be an issue.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Trent-Incr...ords=new+trent

[slicvic]

Originally Posted by akshay1234

Or you can get something like this
http://www.sony.co.in/product/cp-els

It doesn't charge that quickly, but it was a godsend when my damn 9900 was almost out of battery.

I use the same and am quite happy with it. Where it would score is that it can be used for multiple phones (not at the same time), whereas the extra battery would be phone specific.

The only negative is that it takes too long to recharge the Sony Battery.

[sameerg001]

Guys, Any idea how can I transfer my contacts and messages from a windows phone to bb??

[discobiscuit]

Originally Posted by sameerg001

Guys, Any idea how can I transfer my contacts and messages from a windows phone to bb??

Sync all your contacts to your google account - Using Google Sync

Download Google Sync on your BB
Open it, log in and sync your contacts.

[esma1981]

Originally Posted by sameerg001

Guys, Any idea how can I transfer my contacts and messages from a windows phone to bb??

Ok, First of all I'm surprised that you are moving from a windows phone to BB.

Actually the simplest way would be to sync with your hotmail or google account.

Otherwise, you can move your contacts by syncing them with Microsoft Outlook if you have Office Suite on you PC. Ofcourse you will have the use both the windows phone and blackberry desktop apps to do the same. For a Mac it's simpler as all the phone applications use the address book app to sync contacts.

[sameerg001]

Originally Posted by discobiscuit

Sync all your contacts to your google account - Using Google Sync

Download Google Sync on your BB
Open it, log in and sync your contacts.

Okay, do I have to activate bb services for that. That's, pretty expensive and after this sync it is not going to be used anyways.

Originally Posted by esma1981

Ok, First of all I'm surprised that you are moving from a windows phone to BB.

Actually the simplest way would be to sync with your hotmail or google account.

Otherwise, you can move your contacts by syncing them with Microsoft Outlook if you have Office Suite on you PC. Ofcourse you will have the use both the windows phone and blackberry desktop apps to do the same. For a Mac it's simpler as all the phone applications use the address book app to sync contacts.

Na na, am not moving from windows to bb, I am happy with my android. It's My sisters, she's not happy with windows and want android, so for a short while, we need to put all those contacts in bb. And ya, messages too.

[esma1981]

Originally Posted by sameerg001

Okay, do I have to activate bb services for that.

As far as I know you will have to get BB service activated to setup a hotmail or gmail account. Or else you can do a manual sync as per my previous post for contacts. For messages I'll try to go some googling and come up with an answer.

[discobiscuit]

Originally Posted by sameerg001

Okay, do I have to activate bb services for that. That's, pretty expensive and after this sync it is not going to be used anyways.

Not necessary. Do it over Wifi.

Should do the job.

[mobike008]

Taking a cue from our official car reviews, I thought why not pen down a brief and personal experience of my recently acquired Blackberry Z10 !!!

What you'll like :-

1. Solid-built quality and an overall business style look
2. Excellent & Perfectly stable new operating system (OS 10)
3. Fast, Fluid and smooth user interface
4. Great new features on business & personal front
5. Best Browser experience in a mobile phone that I experienced
6. Best touch screen typing experience in a mobile phone that I experienced

What you wont :-

1. Battery life isnt the best.Used to get a horrifying 4-5 hours initially now its settled down to about 9-10 hours
2. Camera quality isnt what I was expecting and below average in low-light conditions
3. Learning curve is a bit steep in understanding the OS10
4. Managing Contacts is a bit tricky. When I synch my contacts to Z10 via. Blackberry Link, few contacts appear twice.
5. Apps availability is far less than its competitors (iOS/Android)

Performance
Z10 comes with a Dual Core Snapdragon 1.5GHZ with 2GB RAM and 16GB Onboard Memory Storage that is expandable to 64GB via. Micro SD storage. It is powered by a 1800 MaH battery with 8MP Rear Camera with 2MP Front Camera with HTML5 for browser. It weights just 138gms.

Everything is fast and instant. Compared to my Torch 9810

Design & Built Quality
It's a rectangle shaped design and comes in black and white colors and looks extremely business like. Built quality is way superior than the previous models of Blackberry.

It's 4.2in screen size feels comfortably large but, they could have used a 4.8in screen, no big complaints though. Overall size of the phone feels perfect to hold and use.

Now a short deep-dive into a few key features of the Z10 :-

HUB
This is a place where all your messages (Linkedin, Facebook, Emails, Text, Calls etc) are shown in a unified way in a "Vertical Manner". HUB can be
customzied to add/exclude items that you wish to view. Great way to just peek and slide back to what you were doing, if you feel the notification is of no importance and can be dealt with it later.

BALANCE
Balance appears on your phone only after you configure your official email which is usually through an enterprise server. Once activated, you can simply slide down by swiping from top-to-down from middle of ANY screen to see 2 tabs on top that is 'Personal & "Work"
Click the tab to toggle between personal and work space. For example, when your in work space, all social apps like Whatsapp, FB, Game apps etc are not visible.

This is a great way to keep both (personal & work) domains separate. There is a small added security of typing in a password to access the "work" space.It's akin to accessing two different domains when you log into a computer

Navigation & Icons
This is the complete revamped and also best part of new OS10. Some of my observations below:-

1. Navigation is fluid and smooth even if initially seems little confusing
2. Touch is very responsive
3. Bubbles around the icons dont look good though. Hope they get rid of it in future updates
4. Active frames is a great idea. You can minimize your active windows and do something else. You can keep 8 Active-Frames at any given point of time.
5. Videos played do not stop incase you want to peek at your messages while the video is still playing in the background. 10.2 upgrade will bring in headless apps which will play even without having to be active in the background. (+) is you neednt restart the apps you use most. (-) it will suck in battery power

Browser
Iam not sure if many are aware. BB has got rid of their BIS/BES plans that used to be the norm in the past and now has set all its users free from their tenterhooks and now we are free to use the data plan of our choice like how other platform users do. Great move by BB.

Browser is one of the best feature of OS 10, if you were using the browser extensively in OS 7, you will appreciate what iam saying. It's miles ahead of the previous BB versions browser experience. Super Fast and loads very quickly. Perhaps me being on 3G also helps. And, even till date is the only platform that supports flash in webpages.

Keypad
This is truly a wonderful piece of innovation. It's undoubtedly the best keyboard on a touchphone in the market ( atleast as of now). You can swipe up the words as you type which reduces your typing effort and also makes you type faster. Someone i know is doing 45 WPP. I hope to get to that level soon. What i dont like is the numerical keypad comes up only when your typing a password.

They should provide a dedicated numerical line at all times. However, you keep swiping down to toggle between words, numerical and special characters. Cool Stuff !!

As you keep typing more,it understands your typing pattern and brings up word even before you type it. Simply awesome

P.S: This is a different experience from the 3rd party apps that are used on Android and other phones

Email/File Viewing/Downloads
This being the core activity of the phone. Z10 does this job flawlessly and downloads images super fast and all types of files can be viewed including
different versions of excel

Calendar & Alarm
This is one of the primary features of blackberry. A business user will appreciate the usefulness of the perfect synch of appointments, calendars and thoughtful reminders that pop up now and again. Alarm clock now comes with an excellent GUI and feels great to use.

Apps
This is the biggest pain-point for everyone. When they launched the Z10, it came with 100,000 apps avaibility on the BB world but, thats not enough. Now it seems they are adding roughly 5000 apps each day with almost all popular apps available on Android and iOS already on OS10. Now its time for BB to jump across to different platforms. BBM comes to Android on June 27th.

Anyways, i use a maximum of 10 apps regularly and another 20apps infrequently. Low availability of apps is least concern for my particular needs

Btw, a great move by BB is to provide FREE of cost the Map My India (MMI) app with an all india map free for download.

Camera
BB was never known for good cameras. Even now in OS10, I have to confess it isn't the best. Even though they have improved dramatically over the previous models but, still nowhere compared to an S3. However, there are plenty of editing features to compensate for the overall quality of the camera but, low light images are simply pathetic.

I use camera a lot (especially for clicking food pictures which is usually in low light, so I'am actually a bit disappointed with this incapability)

Pictures browsing in the phone is quite complicated. It will take some time to understand how its stored. OS10 stores pictures in different folders with thumbnail images. Gets pretty confusing in the begining but, I'am begining to appreciate the reason for it which is ease of navigation.

Battery
Comes with a 1800mAH battery which is actually a wrong move. They should have slapped on a 2400mAH battery as this was their flagship product. Initially the battery used to get drained dramatically fast. 4-5 hours. But, I ensured that each time the battery is fully drained and then charged it fully and also taken some battery saving precautions like disabling gesture based unlocking ( which is one of the best battery consumer) and dimmed the screen to some extent and now iam able to pull off around 9-10 hours from a full charge with medium to heavy usage.

Simply unbeilevable that you cannot know the remaining % of battery on the homescreen. A big thumbs-down

Blackberry Maps
Do I need to even talk about it? BB Maps is nowhere near to Google Maps and is simply not useful in Indian conditions.

Some KEY features that I personally appreciate in the Z10 :-
1. Guesture to unlock
2. Emails deleted in one action ( unlike previous version wherein it will ask delete from handset or server?) only from handset
3. Corporate emails are shown as you see in your outlook. All folders are available and synched. Unlike in previous versions where only Inbox emails are visible
4. Meetings/Events are shown on top of screen in emails for today and tomorrow. Next meeting shows on homescreen
5. Camera has some cool editing features. Plenty of them. Need to explore still
6. Keyboard is a marvel. Iam finally getting to love typing on a touch phone ( honestly speaking, i can never say I dont miss the physical keyboard)
7. Contacts are integrated so well, its harmonious. Click a contact, you will get his entire history (FB, Linkedin, Next meeting with him etc)

What I want to see improved in future upgrades like 10.1 and 10.2 which are immenently close for all OS10 users :-

Improve the battery performance (Top priority)
Improve the camera quality
Create more camera options
Introduce more "gesture" based activity for native and 3rd party apps
More options in quick settings including an option to view % of battery remaining
Make browsing contacts simpler
Automatic BCC field in emails
Vibrate mode for keypad

Many more like above........

There are plenty of small features that can be improved upon which Iam sure we should be seeing added by the time OS 10.2 is released which should be latest by August 2013

Disclaimer : I am not paid by Blackberry to write this review. Iam just a completely smitten BB user and long time fan of Blackberry

[sameerg001]

Originally Posted by discobiscuit

Not necessary. Do it over Wifi.

Should do the job.

If its wifi then no worries. Let me try it out and get back. Many thanks guys.

[discobiscuit]

Originally Posted by mobike008

You can keep 4 Active-Frames at any given point of time.

I am almost sure you should get 8.

If you have more than 4 and then you scroll down you should be able to see 4 more.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

[deepakchan]

Anybody who's looking to buy a Z10, there's a special offer on indiatimes today for 34,731 with b&w

[mobike008]

Originally Posted by discobiscuit

I am almost sure you should get 8.

If you have more than 4 and then you scroll down you should be able to see 4 more.

Your right. After you mentioned, i tried it out. The 4 AF are somewhere in bottom of the screen and you need to scroll down to view them. I think 4 AF would have sufficed

Corrected in my review as well...

Originally Posted by deepakchan

Anybody who's looking to buy a Z10, there's a special offer on indiatimes today for 34,731 with b&w

Thats a great price.

Why does prices always have to slash whenever I buy an expensive item

[deepakchan]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Thats a great price.

Why does prices always have to slash whenever I buy an expensive item

It always happens. I bought a Nokia Lumia 920 for 36k without the free wireless charger offer 2 months back. 1 month back, flipkart had the 920 with the free wireless charger offer for 32k. Today in the same as BBZ10 indiatimes offer, the 920 is 28.2k. I share your feelings.

[SankalpDesai]

Originally Posted by discobiscuit

Sync all your contacts to your google account - Using Google Sync

Download Google Sync on your BB
Open it, log in and sync your contacts.

AFAIK, Google Sync isn't available for personal use any longer. Since January 30, 2013, only Google Apps users would be available to register new devices on Google Sync.

But, Google contacts or even a Gmail account can be used to sync contacts.