BlackBerry Z30

Available now
18th September 2013

The recently-released BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 devices have impressed reviewers and BlackBerry fans but don't appear to have halted BlackBerry's slide into irrelevance. So, the new BlackBerry Z30 aims to make the new generation of devices rather more competitive with class-leading smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The Z30 is almost identical in every way to the Z10 except that the display is bigger and it has a faster processor and much larger battery, but rather bizarrely the display is a lower resolution than the Z10 and it has a different aspect ratio.

The 5" Super AMOLED panel has a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels and a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than the 4.2" 768 x 1280 pixel 15:9 pixel panel in the Z10. In fact, the screen on the Z30 is a bit more standard and the width is more consistent with the 720 x 720 pixel panel on the Q10.

On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with a two megapixel one on the front. Inside is a dual-core 1.7GHz processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard flash memory. The Z30 is an LTE-capable device with NFC support with all the usual smartphone features thrown in such as WiFi and GPS. Inside is a pleasingly big 2880 mAh battery.

Because this is a BlackBerry device, then it runs the BlackBerry OS - in this case the latest version 10.2. Although BlackBerry 10 is a good operating system which strikes an interesting balance between traditional design and modernity, it is unlikely to drag people away from other platforms.

For a flagship device, the Z30 is rather modest. If you compare it with the Galaxy S4 then the Z30 is completely outclassed when it comes to every hardware feature, although BlackBerry 10.2 comes with many useful messaging and collaboration features as standard that rivals do not. But the other key weakness with BlackBerry is a lack of applications compared with iOS and Android smartphones.

BlackBerry say that the Z30 should start shipping in certain markets later this month with a wider scale rollout happening throughout the fourth quarter of 2013.