The Z10 Blackberry (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

For the last two weeks, I’ve been using BlackBerry’s new Z10 smartphone. What I’ve found is a competent modern smartphone that can be trusted to deliver results, but needs more development time for the operating system to mature.

There was a time when smartphones were determined by specifications, but in recent years the basic numbers have remained the same. File the OS names off the spec sheets and you’ll likely find a dual core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon chip, backed up by 1 GB RAM, and a base line of 16 GB internal storage. The BlackBerry Z10 matches up with those numbers, although RAM is bumped up to 2GB, and there are no internal storage options beyond the 16GB (although MicroSD cards are supported in the handset).

Interestingly there are two variants in the chipset to support different 4G standards in the US and in Europe. While your local supplier will no doubt carry the right version those of you importing a handset (or who do a lot of transatlantic travelling) should decide carefully which model to go for. Thankfully 3G is 3G, so you’ll still be able to roam with a decent connection speed no matter where you are.

The Z10 is not what I would call a looker. It follows the current trends in smartphone design and ploughs a furrow marked unremarkable. The screen and bezel work well with each other (and the UI does require a touch of bezel to work well with all the swiping fingers from the side), although the glass does not reach right up to the top and bottom of the Z10, this is occupied by two strips of plastic. On the white model reviewed here it does feel quite stylish. With the black color option it’s a bit more bland.

The design of the Z10 has no buttons on the front panel, so the four buttons that can be used are around edges – power on the top, two volume buttons on the side, and a button to trigger the voice control functions between the latter.

The rear of the Z10 sports a rougher surface to help you hold the device, and just behind the BlackBerry log is the NFC antennae. There’s not a huge amount of functionality here, but I’d expect NFC to be used by payment services in the future, so this is a good bit of forward thinking in the design. What I don’t like is how flimsy the back cover plate it. The entire plastic back sheet comes off, and can flex a huge amount. For a handset that you expect to last two years, the rear cover feels cheap and tacky, and did not fill me with confidence about the build quality of the Z10 and how it will stand up to regular use.

Charging is done through the micro USB port on the side of the handset, next to the HDMI out port, and a 3.5mm headset and headphone jack can be found on the top.

The main camera is a pretty standard 8 megapixel shooter, capable of recording video in 1080p HD quality. BlackBerry have some nice software to help compose the best picture from a number of shots (the TimeShift application) but the camera itself is nothing more than average.

There’s nothing stunning in the hardware or design of the Z10. I’d say it’s above average, even with the concerns over the back cover. There are no show stoppers in terms of the hardware that would make me not consider this device.

The Z10 is, of course, the first smartphone running the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. What you make of the handset is as much a judgement of the operating system as it is on the construction. It’s quite rare that a new operating system and user interface debuts in the market. That makes the Z10 a handset that has an extra hurdle to overcome. Unlike picking up an Android or iOS handset, getting started with BlackBerry OS 10 does require some time, and careful attention to the tutorials given to you when you first start the device will be required.

It does take a few days of getting used to, and honestly there’s not a huge amount to learn here… a swipe up from the bezel will show you the running applications application); while swiping down will bring up a menu screen for the current application. The swipe up has a few variations – before you release your finger, you’ll see at a glance the number of incoming messages and alerts that you have, and you can swipe to the right to go into the BlackBerry Hub to interact with all these messages, or you can swipe back down to return to the app.

Here’s where the history of BlackBerry kicks in – more than anything this handset wants to be the best messaging smartphone out there, and it does go a long way to achieving that. You can see with a single swipe the messages that are waiting to be read, and having your incoming messages (be they email, text, BlackBerry messenger, Facebook, and so on) in one consistent interface makes them much easier to handle during a busy day.

But this is also where the immaturity of BlackBerry 10 starts to show through. While the operating system is stable enough, and I’ve yet to have the OS crash on me (and that’s a big compliment), there are too many tiny inconsistencies and omissions from the Hub app, arguably the core application of the Z10.

Let me highlight just three points that make me hesitate while using the Z10. The first is where the icons pop up when you do the upwards swipe. Most of the time it shows on the left, but there are circumstances when it shows on the right. That’s not good for my muscle memory, or being able to drive the UI intuitively. I constantly have to look down at the screen and focus on what is happening, rather than simply let the automatic part of my brain take over. That normally happens quite quickly on other platforms, but after two weeks it’s not yet kicked in on the Z10.

Most people have more than one Twitter account they interact with, but the Z10 can only use one of them for the Hub application – and rather disastrously the official Twitter app that is included in the firmware also restricts you to one Twitter account. For a switched on and connected messaging device that feels like a missed opportunity.

And then there are the navigation options to move between each day of messages (essentially a page up and page down), along with the ‘mark all as read’. It’s an option that is hidden way – you need to hold down your finger over the date marker in a list of messages for it to appear. This feels more like ‘we need to get this function in’ rather than an intuitive placement.

That’s kind of how I feel about the all the menus. Throughout the built- in applications you can have menu buttons appear at the bottom of the screen, be pulled down from the top, slide in from one side, have the hub alert slide in from the other side, or have the hub alerts replaced by yet another menu. Technically it’s all very advanced, and all the options are available somewhere, but there’s a lot of learning in each app where items are.

Contrast that with the approach in other mobile OS UI’s, where the same options appear in the same place in different apps, and there is a consistency to the UI layout. That’s what Blackberry need to work on. They need a UI ninja that will be able to direct the whole look and feel of the UI so that everything acts consistently in just one way no matter the mode or app that the handset is in at that moment in time.