CobaltTech Arbitrary Point System (CAPS) Finish 1 - 5 Look and feel, build quality and finish Glass on the front, plastic everywhere else. It feels pretty solid considering the plastic they've chosen, but the back cover is thin and flimsy. The USB and HDMI ports look like they've just been slapped in there and might come loose if mistreated. Score - 2 Screen 1 - 5 Size, resolution and quality The 4.2 inch screen feel a good fit in this handset and its coupled with a resolution to match coming in just a little over 720p. Colours and viewing angles are good, as is the brightness. This is certainly one point where the Z10 doesn't excel, but does get things right. Score - 4 Camera 1 - 5 Picture quality, depth of settings and features, ease of use I've not had a chance to take it out in low light yet, what I've seen is pretty good. Standard pictures deliver a decent enough result too. Colours and contrast are surprisingly good for such a basic camera, but the lack of adjustable settings means pictures will often fall a little flat. You do get a handful of scene modes, HDR, two aspect ratios and some control over the flash, but the control over the auto focus is a little clunky. The Time Shift mode is pretty nice, but competitors have released similar modes with far more functionality. Score - 3 Performance and Usability 1 - 5 Processing power, smoothness of user interface, usability of interface The figures on paper are pretty impressive - 1.5 GHz dual-core processor from Snapdragon's top line (at the time) S4 range. 2GB of RAM means all that multitasking is pretty smooth. The problems don't lie in the hardware however, everything seems to be tuned to hit benchmarks, but not actually function well in your hand. Blackberry boast the fastest web browser on mobile (when they're used to having the slowest) and bechmark test support this, but in my experience, you'll wait a good few seconds for the browser to process a shortened URL before it actually tries to load any content. The browser will frequently crash as well and need reloading to get a response. The actual OS is generally pretty slick, but the gesture control, even when you've had time to get used to it, does more harm than good. I'll often find myself quitting apps when trying to avoid the autocorrection on the keyboard, or getting lost in a text message on the hub as the back button isn't visible when the keyboard is showing. The hardware specs are the only thing saving this score from the toilet. Score - 3 Memory 1 - 5 Built in storage and expandability 16GB built in plus a card slot. Only one set of internal memory though means this can get filled quite quickly by apps (if you can find any). Score - 3 Apps 0 - 5 In-built apps and features, platform app availability It doesn't actually do too badly for built-in apps. You get most of the major social site apps preinstalled plus a basic office suite and file manager. The good news pretty much stops here though. App support for BB10 is terrible, despite Blackberry throwing money at developers to attract them to their platform. You'll find Whatsapp on here, but no Instagram, nothing from Sky, not even Google Maps. The BBC news and iPlayer apps are present, but it turns out all they do is open up the browser and point it at the relevant web pages. It is possible to side-load Android apps, but considering >95% of users will never do that (and Blackberry offer very little instruction on it) I'm going to have to score them down. Score - 1 Extras -5 - 5 Value for money, special features or significant design decisions Straight away I have to give it -1 for value for money. It's priced up with the big boys, but doesn't feel like its delivering a top-end experience. They've ticked a lot of boxes, but it just feels cheap. I'm giving it another -1 for a couple of design decisions; You can power off the handset by holding the power button when the phone is locked, no gestures required. I've caught it powering itself off without any interaction from me as well. The camera has adjustable auto focus, but you have to drag the reticule to adjust it. Given that there's no separate capture button, it's easy to tap the screen and take a picture rather than moving the focus reticule. Also, the USB and HDMI ports are right next to each other and not labeled or covered, so Blackberry have had problems with people getting the (very similar looking) ports mixed up and trying to force the USB cable in the HDMI port. I will give it a +1 for the excellent hub integration but I'm going to take it away for the awful gesture control. Anything that requires users to watch 4 tutorial videos before they can even use it is probably a bad idea. Sometimes the gestures get in the way of the actual interface as well which immediately disconnects you from thruster experience. Lastly, I will mention the PC suite as well. It's a visual improvement on the old Desktop Manager software, but it's actually a lot harder to use and offers far fewer options, so it's neutral marks on that front, just worth a mention. Score - -2 Overall 0 - 35 The tally of the above scores, converted to percentage A final score of 14 out of 35 is not exactly great, but it reflects why this handset hasn't been selling in stores quite how Blackberry would have liked. It comes across as a pretty average handset with some pretty major shortfalls overshadowing a few genuinely good points. BB10 feels like a first generation operating system and this is probably the most damaging aspect of the handset. If it had the build quality of the Q10 and a better stocked app store, it might have been able to achieve mediocrity. Score - 40%