In many ways, I'm maybe a bit unqualified to write a review of new BlackBerry hardware. I've never owned a BlackBerry device, and have only poked at a few over my years as an IT person—iPhone and Android handsets tended to be more popular even among the professional set. I have a passing familiarity with the Bolds and Curves that compose the company-formerly-known-as-RIM's pre-BlackBerry 10 product line, but my time as a smartphone owner began after the sun had set on the BlackBerry empire.

This means, however, that I'm looking at the BlackBerry Z10 and its accompanying operating system with the same eyes as many smartphone purchasers will be seeing the phone: to us, it's a new touchscreen-driven platform that goes up against two huge, entrenched competitors (and one scrappy contender with deep pockets). It's not good enough for the Z10 to be the best BlackBerry phone ever—it also has to defeat phones from the companies that have all but pushed BlackBerry out of a market it helped to pioneer.

The BlackBerry Z10 serves as a modern-day reboot for the company, and the phone's success or failure will likely dictate whether this is the beginning of a comeback or the end of the line. Where does it succeed, and where are its version 1.0 problems?

Body and build quality

Specs at a glance: BlackBerry Z10 Screen 1280x768 4.2" (356 ppi) IPS touchscreen OS BlackBerry 10 CPU Dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus RAM 2GB GPU Qualcomm Adreno 225 Storage 16GB NAND flash, expandable via microSD Networking 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC Ports Micro USB, Micro HDMI, headphones Camera 8.0MP rear camera, 2MP front camera Size 5.12" x 2.58" x 0.35" (130 x 65.6 x 9 mm) Weight 0.30 lbs (135.4 g) Battery 1800 mAh Starting price TBA. Likely $149 or $199 with a two-year contract. Sensor Ambient light sensor, GPS Other perks Power adapter, case, screen cleaner

For a company that has never really made a phone like this before, the actual hardware itself pretty much nails it. At this point, the modern smartphone's form factor is "a rectangle with a screen on front" in the same way that a laptop is "a screen with a keyboard attached," but BlackBerry has gone and made themselves a pretty nice rectangle.

The body of the phone is made of a solid black (or white) plastic. This is plastic construction done right—it's not too bulky (as is the Nokia Lumia 920), but it doesn't feel too light or "cheap" either (as some have said of Samsung's Galaxy S III). The phone has rounded corners and a (very) gently rounded back that feel good to hold. The back cover, which peels off to expose the phone's SIM card tray, microSD card slot, and removable 1800 mAh battery, is made of a lightly textured rubberized black plastic that provides a nice grip, again standing in contrast to the glossy, slick plastic and glass backs used by many other smartphones.

The Z10's size also contributes to how good it feels to hold—if, like me, you find the iPhone 5 to be a bit too thin but also find the Nexus 4 or the Samsung Galaxy S III to be a little too large for comfort (at least for sustained one-handed use), the Z10 finds a great middle ground. It's slightly larger than an iPhone 5 in every dimension: 5.12" tall, 2.58" wide, and 0.35" thick (compared to 4.87" by 2.31" by 0.30"). This also makes it a bit heavier (4.78 ounces compared to 3.95 ounces) compared to Apple's latest phone, but it's still very comfortable to hold and to carry.

The phone also takes a step back from the trend toward larger and larger screens that defines the Android side of the fence at the moment—it's got an excellent 4.2-inch 1280x768 IPS four-point touchscreen, larger than the iPhone's 4.0 inches but smaller than the approaching-and-exceeding five-inch displays of phones like the Nexus 4 and the Galaxy Note II. The display is bright and colorful, and the 356 ppi pixel density makes text and images crisp and clear.

Sound quality from the single speaker on the bottom of the phone is about as good as you'd expect—it gets reasonably loud but it's definitely tinny. Call quality is neither exceptionally poor nor exceptionally good—I called Reviews Editor Florence Ion on both her office phone and her cell phone, and she told me I sounded like I was on a cell phone. That should tell you about all you need to know.

The keyboard

After spending some time with the phone as a daily driver, I can say without hesitation that the keyboard is my favorite thing about the platform. I suspect that there's quite a bit of overlap between the BlackBerry faithful and the physical phone keyboard holdouts, and in the Z10 BlackBerry has done an admirable job of making a software keyboard that physical keyboard adherents won't hate.

The first thing to like is its accuracy—even on larger phones like the Nexus 4 or Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the best I have been able to do with any given Android keyboard is to get used to its quirks, and while I generally have less trouble with the iOS keyboard, the keys are still small and I end up relying heavily on autocorrect to set my mistakes straight. The most common approach to predictive typing—giving a list of suggestions that float above the software keyboard, as in Android 4.1 and 4.2 keyboards—also leaves something to be desired, since it requires you to interrupt your normal typing flow to check out the words, pick one, and move your thumb up from its normal position to tap it.

The Z10's predictive typing isn't perfect but unlike other implementations of the idea, I've actually come to enjoy it and use it regularly. As you type, small word suggestions appear over top of the keys. It makes general suggestions for conjunctions and such when you're between words, but it will continue to make suggestions as you progress through words: typing a W, for instance, could make "where" appear over the H key, "would" appear over the O key, "water" appear over the A key, and so on. Flick upward from the key you want to make the words appear.

These words can be a bit hard to read depending on how quickly you type, and it's not always a sure thing that the word you want will appear anywhere on the screen as you type (though the keyboard will adapt to your typing patterns as you use it). I still dig the implementation, though, mostly because the way the suggestions appear doesn't require me to divert my thumbs from their normal course. Whether I want to type "where" out in full or auto-complete the word halfway through, my finger is still going for that "e" key, and I can quickly and easily move on to the next letter or word from there.

Being part of BlackBerry 10, the new keyboard would feel out of place if it didn't make use of a bunch of gestures—swipe from right to left to delete your last-entered word, and swipe down to cycle between the standard keyboard and the keyboard with numbers and symbols (both of which can also be accessed with buttons, for the swipe-averse). Polyglots will also appreciate the ability to choose up to three default languages for the typing suggestions—begin tapping out words in any of those languages, and the typing predictions will automatically begin offering you suggestions in the current language.

There are a few odd areas where the keyboard deviates from the standard touch keyboard experience for no real good reason—tapping the Shift key, for example, doesn't transform the characters on the keys from capital to lowercase or vice versa. This emulates the experience of using a physical keyboard a bit too literally, ignoring the inherent flexibility of soft keyboards. Engaging the caps lock is also different from how it's done on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone—you press and hold the Shift key rather than double tapping it, so prepare to unlearn that behavior if you make the switch from any other platform.

It also lacks some niceties that people coming over from other platforms might miss—Swype-like gesture typing is probably the most prominent example. However, it's an easy software keyboard to get used to, and it's got plenty of ideas that other platforms would do well to emulate.

Camera

The eight megapixel webcam is a solid point-and-shoot. Ars Associate Writer Casey Johnston already took it for a spin in her hands-on with the phone, and found that while it generally did a pretty good job, its shots were a bit fuzzy and lacked detail compared to her iPhone 4S. We busted out an iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III to get some further comparisons, and what we found mostly backed up her conclusions.

In this picture of my colorful desktop doodads, the three phones have to deal with less-than-ideal indoor lighting, and I tried to capture a corner of my desktop's monitor in the shot to see how they handled its (much brighter) light. The iPhone probably gets the clearest picture here (zoom in to see the detail on the phone's buttons), and while the colors are a bit saturated, they're generally accurate. The Z10's shot is both a bit fuzzier and a bit darker (though the colors are still fine); the Galaxy S III does a better job with the light, but things looked comparatively washed out.

Go outdoors, and the lighting differences between the three basically disappear. If you zoom in on some of the bricks especially, though, you'll find that the iPhone again does the best job with color and detail; the Z10 does well with color but loses detail, and the S III loses a little of both. Zoomed out (as they appear inline here, and as you'd probably see them on Facebook or where ever they'd actually be posted), the performance of all three is basically fine in good light—the Z10 isn't exceptionally good, but it's a perfectly serviceable point and shoot.