The BlackBerry Z10 Q & A: Response to Most Questions Raised in SA

While the phone being reviewed is not different from those found in Canada or England, the reason for this post is to clear a lot of questions being raised by users in the African market since this is a unique market with different offering compared to those in other countries.

NB: Most of the information covered in other reviews by Phonearena, GSM Arena, Crackberry, Engadget will not be repeated here, the aim is to look at the questions that were asked by people in South Africa mainly:

 

The BlackBerry Z10

 

1. Does it Use BIS?

The answer to this is No; you do not need a BIS on your BlackBerry Z10 device.

2. Does It Use a Lot of Data?

This question has been asked many times and a lot of people fear that especially in these parts of Africa where data is priced high. The answer to this is dependent on the user. If you love watch Youtube videos or streaming audio/internet radio then any phone will consume data. But my own assessment is that the BlackBerry Z10 is data efficient, I will list the following tasks that I have on my phone:

1. Browsing the web

2. Browsing Facebook, uploading pictures

3. Browsing Twitter & tweeting

4. Receiving email, replying the same

5. Downloaded The Score and Password Keeper

The webpages I have browsed are quite many, some news sites and particularly Supersport playing the Fantasy League & prediction game for Barclays Premier League. The Facebook/Twitter apps I left running in the background updating timeline. My facebook timeline has 2 social pages Kutandara naTete maNcube & Auntie Jenny Lounge, they post maybe 30 posts each per day, then news page Mugrade Seven which posts about 30 news items too with picutures attached, Mashable also post pictures, so my news feed is quite lively without adding the more than 600 friends. I consider myself to be a heavy user i.e. I cannot go 30 minutes without checking or commenting via Facebook most times.

While doing the above I had a 100MB of data using the 8.ta network. 3 days later I am still with 30MB balance on my account meaning I am using at the rate of 23MB per day. Is that bad? For myself, 690MB per month is not bad given my appetite for constant connectivity. In all the above instances I never switched off the data services. So ideally I can go a month on 500MB (R120.00) using current network, this convinced me to port my number from Vodacom to 8.ta who have 2GB+1GB for R149.00 but even though this is a promo, their 500MB is priced well. I could have opted for CellC and make more gains but given the congestion on their data network, I am not prepared to go 30 minutes without connectivity. I can just flip in that time.

3. Is BBM Going To Be Discontinued?

This is a question I have seen asked many times, possibly due to confusion as to what BBM and BIS is, but the short answer is BBM remains on BlackBerry smart phones in fact it has gotten better with voice and video calls baked into the app.

4. Is it Slow? Does it Bring a Spinning Clock?

BlackBerry took their time making the BlackBerry 10 Operating System, using it you will find that it is fast, does not lag in any way. It does not hang and I have been trying to push it to limits and see but so far I cannot find the clock. I am impressed by the phone and what it can do, currently I am busy learning the tricks and tips on the phone, there is so much put into the OS, I will do another Blog Post with further answers to things I was struggling to find that changed from how they were executed on OS7 going back.

NB: If you got more questions that need answering, throw in comment section.