BlackBerry Z10 vs. Apple iPhone 5: Spec Showdown

It's been a long time coming, but BlackBerry has finally taken the wraps off its first BB 10 smartphones, the BlackBerry Q10 and BlackBerry Z10. We've already had a chance to spend some quality time?with the Z10, the first of the new phones to be released, which, surprisingly, is the one that doesn't have a keyboard. BlackBerry plans to release the keyboarded Q10 at some point in the near future, but first we get the Z10, a big black slab. You might even say it looks sort of similar to another smartphone you may have heard of, the Apple iPhone 5.

Now, there's no denying Apple's got the best apps in the biz, but what if you're not a fan of the operating system? Or what if all your friends use BBM, not iMessage? Does the Z10 hold a fighting chance against the smartphone titan? We've stacked up the specs for the BlackBerry Z10 side by side against the iPhone 5 to help determine which phone is right for you.

As you can see, it's a pretty close match. From a design standpoint, the phones are actually quite similar. Each features a rounded slab design, made of high-quality materials. Compared with the large Samsung Galaxy S III?and smaller iPhone 5, the BlackBerry Z10 is a very comfortable size that falls right in the middle. It's almost an ounce heavier than the iPhone, but you also get 0.2-inches more of display.

Speaking of displays, the Z10 features a 4.2-inch, 1,280-by-768 LCD. At 356 pixels per inch, that's actually higher in density than the iPhone 5 and its vaunted Retina display, which has 326 pixels per inch. This difference is essentially imperceptible to the naked eye, so we can call this one a tie.

The iPhone 5 is powered by Apple's A6 chip, which it claims is up to twice as fast as the A5 processor found in the iPhone 4S. The Z10, meanwhile, is powered by a 1.5-GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. We've tested that chip in lots of phones, from the Samsung Galaxy S III to the Nokia Lumia 920, and it's very fast. We didn't encounter any performance problems with the Z10, and it turned in some very respectable browser benchmarks.

Both phones feature 8-megapixel rear-facing cameras. The iPhone 5 has one of the best phone cameras we've tested, along with features like the ability to create seamless, high-res panoramas up to 28 megapixels. But the Z10'S camera is no slouch either, and took some excellent images in good light in our tests. And while the Z10's camera isn't loaded with features, one of them?TimeShift?is killer. It takes a burst photos, detects the faces, then lets you swap them in or out from other photos to make sure everyone looks perfect.

Both phones feature support for 4G LTE, as well as Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi on 2.4 and 5GHz bands. The iPhone 5 comes in either 16, 32, or 64GB storage options, while the Z10 comes with 16GB of internal storage, expandable up to an additional 64GB via microSD card.

The numbers don't tell all when it comes to battery life. We got 10 hours and 54 minutes of talk time with the Z10, compared with 8 hours and 40 minutes of talk time on the iPhone 5. But the Z10 only lasted for 3 hours and 34 minutes of streaming video over LTE, which is a lot less than other results we've been seeing lately.

On the software side, the iPhone 5 is running Apple's iOS 6, while the Z10 is running the brand new BlackBerry 10. iOS 6 is smooth, simple, and chock full of app choices. BB10, meanwhile, is full of promise, like seamless messaging and support for corporate management. But the fate of the Z10, and BlackBerry 10 in general, largely rests on the strength of its apps. BlackBerry already has 70,000 apps available for BB10 in the app store, which is impressive, but lots of big names are missing, which can be a dealbreaker for lots of people.

There are plenty of other features, like voice control, which both phones have, and NFC, which is only available on the Z10. But in general, both of these phones are pretty evenly matched, from a specs perspective. So which one should you get? Well, if you want to get a new phone now, you've got no choice but the iPhone 5. The Z10 won't be available until March, and even then there's no concrete date.

If you can hold out, it'll be interesting to see what new BB10 apps appear, and if BlackBerry works out some of the kinks we saw in the operating system around the time of launch. Right now there's no clear cut winner, but it's certainly an interesting battle.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414915,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05039TX1K0000762

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