Like the majority of mid-range Android devices, the specs of the Q5 will feel familiar to anyone watching the modern smartphone market – a 1.2 GHz dual core Snapdragon S4, 2GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage – although the specs are all very slightly down on the Q10 (which has a 1.5 GHz CPU and 16 GB of storage, but shares the 2 GB of RAM). And like the Q10, it also comes with a physical keyboard.
Let’s start with the keyboard, because understanding the decisions behind this device start with the keyboard. The best thing I found about the Q10 was the keyboard. With individually sculpted keys – each had their own independent travel, with each side of the keyboard tilted to allow smooth ‘two thumb’ texting, and the silver bars that separated the horizontal rows helped guide your eyes to the keys.
It’s noticeable that the dimensions of the Q5 and Q10 are almost identical, and the space taken up by the two keyboards are similar. I suspect that someone inside BlackBerry has decided that their had to be ‘clear air’ between the quality of the keyboards on the Q5 and the Q10 to ensure the executives buy the Q10 and the budget conscious buyers will be happy to choose the lower priced Q5.
The problem with that argument is that the Q5′s keyboard is missing all the good things that made the Q10′s keyboard a joy to use (and arguably moved the Q10 from the ‘quirky’ pile to the usable in real life’ pile.
The Q5′s keys do light up, and they use the familiar Blackberry layout, but with a lower physical profile it’s harder to hit the right key, and when you do not only do you need to ensure that you hit the key dead center for it to register, you’ll also feel the surrounding keys move down very slightly, almost in sympathy. It doesn’t impart any confidence in the keys – and let’s not forget the majority of people will be using this keyboard for the duration of a two year contract. I’ll be interested to see how well this stands up after 700 days of use.
At least the lower specs in the hardware are understandable. If you want to position a number of devices in a portfolio, the easiest way to do that is to have slower (and less expensive) chips inside the handset. The trick is to ensure that the lower specced chips do not have a significant impact on the performance of the handset compared to the top of the range devices. This is an area where Windows Phone is the clear winner with an almost universal experience across the price range, while it is a very noticeable factor on Android handsets.
BlackBerry is closer to the Android model, but not as drastic. The BB10 operating system isn’t set up to transition or move between applications quickly, no matter how hast you can drive the touch based gesture that acts as a ‘home’ key, but putting the Q5 next to the Q10 and Z10 and the slower UI is noticeable.
The screen remains the 720×720 screen, but with slightly less vibrancy and brightness compared to the Q10. Viewing angles are very much set up for a single user experience, but I don’t see the Q5 being used as a video playback unit – a 4:3 ratio video has to be reduced to fit in the square format, and don’t even begin to consider how tiny a 2.35:1 picture ratio for something like Bladerunner would look.
The smaller screen does reduce the impact on the battery life which is useful, because the performance here is similar to the other BB10 smartphones. With gentle use it definitely gets through a 9 to 5 routine, but if you use the device in anger, with constant checking of messages, alerts, and internet access, you’ll be looking for more power before the afternoon is out.
The Q5 doesn’t add anything to the software package that was seen in the Q10 and Z10 handsets. The BlackBerry 10 operating system does have some unique features, with the touch gestures replacing the home button available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone handsets. It still feels like re-inventing the wheel simply to be different. Using the Q5 I still found myself in the paradigm of going into an app, calling up the list of running apps, moving into another one, in, out, in, out, throughout the day.
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