Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
hows the speed compared to other phones?
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Good in my opinion - it's definitely faster than my iPhone 4. Scrolling performance seems good and smooth, and the browser is quite quick. I don't know if it's iPhone 5 quick, I haven't played with my wife's 5 enough to have a good opinion. I don't game on my phones, so I have no idea what raw graphics performance is like.
Other stuff in no particular order:
* The scrolling momentum is a bit different than the iPhone - not worse, just different - it kinda picks up speed as it leaves your finger - hard to explain, but basically the acceleration curve is different. It is smooth though.
* Screen quality is really good; it's actually higher PPI than the iPhone. Auto-dimming based on ambient light works PROPERLY, which cannot be said of any iOS device.
* The Hub really is a revelation coming from the iPhone. I tucked away the BBM and Text Message app icons in a folder - no need for them, you can get to that functionality via the Hub from anywhere. It nice not to have notification badges on Twitter, Messages, Facebook, Mail, and Calendar, and be flipping between them clearing them off. I came for the Hub, and I love it. It makes the silo'ed data approach of iOS seem really, really, really backwards.
* The hardware quality is good. It feels good in the hand, size, weight, build quality, and appearance wise. It looks like it means business - it's dark, trim, understated and the little notification LED looks cool. I dunno. I like it. RIM has always made decent hardware; this is no exception.
* The calendar numbers are larger or smaller in month view depending on the meeting load that day
* The keyboard auto-completion words are based on your message/text/bbm content - it's suggesting words like vmware, VMFS, Adobe, Squid, etc, that it would have no business suggesting on a non-IT user's phone. The key click noise is infinitely cooler than iOS (nitpick, I know, but its this low pitched thunk rather than a click - it sounds good). Overall, I do feel the BB10 onscreen keyboard is better than iOS so far.
* the Active Tile (or whatever it's called) task switching and task killing is far superior to the iPhone. Some of the tiles are live (calendar, weather, and photos, that I've noticed), which is their own take on Metro and Android widgets I guess. It'll be even better once more apps support it.
* The Dropbox integration into File Manager is superb. Again, this makes iOS look a little ######ed - it's very easy to work with; I don't know what Apple was thinking with the silo'ed data.
* The browser bookmarking system supports tags. I've not used another browser on any platform that supports this. Neat idea.
* I had
no idea how much I missed the notification LED from my old 8770 back in the day. Truly a handy feature.
* Having a phone be almost 100% gesture based is the way to go. Steve Jobs was right on this one, and should not have capitulated to having the home button on the iPhone. Clicking home seems archaic, as does having to click to wake it up. There's only really the four side swipes, plus the little j-hook for Hub, and the way they implement all of these, where you can begin to pull them in and see what is going to happen before it actually the action, means its unlikely you'll get confused, and never once you have it down. It's intuitive after 5 minutes use.
Rough spots so far:
- I have problems getting the cursor magnification reticule to appear for editing, or I sometimes get stuck in the text selection mode rather than the cursor reticule mode. I think it's partially me, and maybe it's partially a bit fiddly too.
- Maps look somewhat primitive and have no satellite view. I can't vouch for accuracy - i never had accuracy issues with iOS or Google maps, so I don't know. Turn by turn was a bit slow to actually begin a route, but once it did, it was acceptable. It's on par with the iOS TomTom app for visuals - nothing exciting, but enough.
- Android apps run slower (although not awfully overall in my highly limited testing) and don't render fonts as well - you can tell which apps were Android ports. This will be about as annoying probably as using iPhone apps on an iPad in 2x mode is - not ideal, but acceptable if it fills a need. Native apps will always be the gold standard (unsuprising)
- The Twitter supplied twitter app sucks - because I'm coming from the iPhone, I've been totally spoiled by Tweetbot, and especially Twitteriffic. It's a native app though and performs well, at least. This is an area I expect will get addressed in the future via third party devs.
- The app store has a dearth of good apps. Which I knew going in. They've already said they'll have the handful of additional apps I need on the phone (Rdio and Skype are really all I'm desperate for. Lync will also be nice if it makes it, and I have no doubt it will. Add in MLB@Bat and NHL Gamcenter, and I'm good)
- The voice stuff isn't on par with Siri. I couldn't figure out how to create an alarm "in 20 minutes" which is the kind of thing I use Siri for on the iPad _all the time_ for household stuff like remembering when to let the dog in or when to turn the bathtub off for the kids, etc.
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That's all I got right now - way more than you asked for, but I figured I'd share since people are probably curious.
I'm happy with the purchase right now (day 2..lol). Once I get Rdio, MLB@Bat, Skype, and some of the other tier-1 apps that have been promised, I think I'll be really happy.
I'm glad RIM has managed to put together a decent product - the folks that worked hard on this have done a good job for an initial release, and they deserve the opportunity to fight it out in the marketplace. I have no doubt this is enough to keep them alive, albeit as a hugely distant 3rd or 4th place..but that's OK, its a big and ever growing market, and not everyone needs to be a 100 billion goliath. It'll find it's niche.
Interesting side note/story - the girl who helped me with the purchase said she could have sold every unit she could get her hands on, if she could have gotten more - I bought on Friday morning, and she said she could have sold 40 the day before, and this was at a small, small store downtown (@ Bow Valley Square; it's like a 40 square foot Telus shop). Doesn't mean anything really, compared to an Apple or Samsung launch, but I thought it was interesting none the less. While I was buying two other people came in looking for them (I got the last one). So there is some demand there.
