Nokia Lumia 928 vs Blackberry Z10
Blackberry has a sensation associated with it. As such, Z10 was sold more because of loyalty than the features it had to offer. That is not to run down BB Z10 or its features, but there were die hard BB fans who were waiting for Z10 for almost a year without buying another smartphone. That loyalty is a strong point for BB, and we hope they will take necessary steps to capitalize that. On the other hand, Nokia also has a significant amount of fans like that who are waiting Nokia to release the next smartphone to make the purchase. This is with good reason given in the old days; Nokia was at the top of the market, and people trusted Nokia as a brand. They are regaining the brand popularity again, and the number of die-hard Nokia fans is also increasing. So in essence, the two smartphones we are going to discuss today are marketed and sold because of loyalty of the customers towards the brand rather than their marketing alone. The implication is that if they have a strong marketing campaign, they can actually reach a wider audience and grab more shares from the ever growing smartphone market. Let us compare these two smartphones side by side to understand whether the marketing division of each manufacturer has anything unique to boast about in these smartphones.
Nokia Lumia 928 Review
Nokia Lumia 928 is more or less the same smartphone compared to Nokia Lumia 920. It seems that Nokia has slightly changed the appearance and rebranded the Lumia 920 because Verizon wanted an exclusive smartphone from Nokia. However, the first thing we noticed was that Lumia 928 doesn’t look as good as Lumia 920; which is not a good impression. That is not to say it’s a bad smartphone, but it’s somewhat thick compared to the new smartphones and feels heavy in your hand, which might be a problem for some. It sports a AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi. The Corning Gorilla Glass 2 reinforcement protects the screen from scratches and dents. As usual, Nokia offers PureMotion HD+ and ClearBlack display enhancements, providing you with a deep black that is pleasing to the eyes. Nokia Lumia 928 comes with a Micro Sim just like the Lumia 920.
Nokia Lumia 928 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset along with Adreno 225 chipset and 1GB of RAM. As you can clearly see, this is not the top configurations in the game, but for a Windows Phone, these configurations are top tier. Since the Windows Phone 8 operating system is heavily optimized for this hardware, we do see a smoothly running smartphone over the set of tasks you want to get done.
Nokia offers 3G HSDPA connectivity as well as 4G LTE connectivity that ensures you can stay connected at all times. Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n enables you to surf over the available Wi-Fi hotspots and with DLNA you can stream rich media content to your big screens. You can also set up a Wi-Fi hotspot easily to share your super-fast internet connection.
Nokia Lumia 920 was renowned for superb low light photography, and Nokia has kept the same feature in Lumia 928, as well. It is one of the best smartphones for photography and offers a range of hardware and software enhancements to ensure that your experience in photography is enjoyable. The 8MP Carl Zeiss sensor is at the center with xenon flash and optical image stabilization. The sensor size is 1/3.2” and has 1.4µm pixel size along with PureView technology. It can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second with video stabilization and stereo sound. One can also use the 1.2MP front facing camera for video conferences, as well.
The internal storage of Lumia 928 stagnates at 32GB without the option to be expanded using a microSD card, but 32GB is fairly a comfortable amount of storage. Nokia Lumia 928 comes in Black or White and offers more than 11 hours of talk time with the 2000mAh non-removable battery pack.
Blackberry Z10 Review
BlackBerry Z10 is a smartphone that would determine whether we will see any more BB devices in the market or not. Having that in mind, we should commend on Z10 for its elegant looks that closely resembles the square-type outlook of Apple iPhone 5. This is not to say that Z10 is stylistically vibrant; in fact, it rather has a gloomy take on that with the monochrome exterior, but it is also elegantly built that may catch the eyes of the executives as usual. A remarkable difference compared to iPhone 5 is the horizontal bands that span at the top and bottom. BlackBerry Z10 comes with 4.2 inch capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 355ppi.
BlackBerry Z10 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM. The operating system at play is RIM Blackberry 10 OS which comes brand-new to this device. As we stressed before, the future of BBs depend on Z10 and BB 10 OS, as well. It is more or less like any smartphone OS we see nowadays with a couple of tricks in its sleeve. However, we are visibly worried about the prehistoric applications available in their app store which creates a huge void in modern customers mind. In fact, some of the applications suggested by the OS were rather stale and not monitored because they were actually apps created for the Playbook and looks disoriented in Z10. RIM promises that they’ll be upgrading the app store in the near future with a lot more applications which sounds like a solace.
BlackBerry Z10 features 4G LTE connectivity as well as 3G HSDPA connectivity, which is a great step to reach more audience. The web browsing seems super-fast as well tripping the balance towards buying a Z10. It also features Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n for continuous connectivity. The internal storage is at 16GB with the ability to expand storage using microSD card up to 32GB. We commend RIM for including a micro HDMI port in BB Z10 for better connectivity.
BB Z10 has 8 MP cameras with LED flash that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second with continuous autofocus and image stabilization. The secondary camera is 2 MP and can capture 720p videos @ 30 fps. There are some interesting additions in the camera interface for BB 10. The interface, of course, needs some polishing up, but you can take a time shift photo of a group and select individual faces within that short span depending on your preferences.
BB Z10 also has a Map application, but that is mediocre, to say the least. RIM will need to do a lot of convincing to make people use that map application over Google Maps or even the newly released Apple Maps. However, compared to Blackberry 7 (which is apparently the predecessor of BB 10), BB 10 is really good and gesture based. It allows you to have either concurrently running application emulating the multi-tasking, also featuring Blackberry hub. BB Hub is like a list of every communication line you have which might be alarmingly crowded but can easily be filtered, as well. BB Z10 has a removable battery of 1800mAh that is estimated to last for 8 hours, which is average.
A Brief Comparison Between Nokia Lumia 928 and Blackberry Z10
• Nokia Lumia 928 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM 8960 Snapdragon chipset along with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM while Blackberry Z10 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM.
• Nokia Lumia 928 runs on Windows Phone 8 while Blackberry Z10 runs on Blackberry 10 OS.
• Nokia Lumia 928 has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with PureMotion HD+ and ClearBlack display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi while Blackberry Z10 has 4.2 inches capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 355 ppi.
• Nokia Lumia 928 has 8MP camera that is capable of extreme low light photography can capture 1080p HD videos@30 fps while Blackberry Z10 has 8MP camera that can capture 1080p HD videos@30 fps.
• Nokia Lumia 928 is larger, thicker and heftier (133 x 68.9 mm / 10.1 mm / 162g) than Blackberry Z10 (130 x 65.6 mm / 9 mm / 137.5g).
• Nokia Lumia 928 has 2000mAh battery while Blackberry Z10 has 1800mAh battery.
Conclusion
As you can clearly see, there are plenty of things for the marketing divisions to boast about in each smartphone at question. Blackberry Z10 has a strong loyal customer base, and the operating system is new and optimized for the underlying hardware which gives it an edge. On the other hand, Nokia offers the best low light performance in any smartphone camera that gives Lumia 928 a clear edge over others. The deep blacks in the awesome display panel of Lumia 928 also help to eliminate any competition left. However, we don’t think that is enough to convert a die-hard fan of BB to switch to a Lumia 928 given both offer different flavors of operating systems that go on distinct roads. There is no doubt that both smartphones will serve you well, but you need to understand that the BB app store is relatively new and offers less number of apps compared to what is offered in Windows App store. Both of these stores offer negligible number of apps compared to Android or Apple app stores but, since we aren’t discussing that, we can opt talking about those numbers, as well. Blackberry Z10 feels light, thin and sturdy on your hand, which may be a plus, whereas Nokia Lumia 928 is alarmingly hefty for such a small smartphone. We advise you to visit the store and get the experience of using both these operating systems before making your purchasing decision.