The BlackBerry Q10 ($199.99 with contract) stands alone. It's in a category of one. It's hard to compare the Q10 to other smartphones because it won't appeal to the average smartphone buyer, just as the target buyer for the Q10 is dissatisfied with the mainstream smartphones on the market. For the niche of mad-messaging executive and small-business types who will only be satisfied with the world's finest hardware keyboard, the Q10 is ideal. But is that niche large enough any more? That's for you, as the buyer, to judge.

Physical Design

Physically, the BlackBerry Q10 has evolved directly from the BlackBerry Bold 9930. I've spent enough time with enough units by now to appreciate its excellent build quality. At 4.7 by 2.6 by .4 inches (HWD) and 4.9 ounces, it's very clearly designed for both one-handed and two-handed use. It's shorter than the full-touch BlackBerry Z10, and still narrow enough to use in one hand. The back is a soft-touch, carbon-fiber-like material that RIM calls "woven glass," with a subtle gray-and-black pattern. (The device also comes in all white.) It feels distinctly different and more premium than plastic, but lighter than metal. The front of the phone is evenly balanced between a 3.1-inch, 720-by-720-pixel display and a physical QWERTY keyboard that's similar to the Bold's, but better. A traditional BlackBerry notification light blinks up by the earpiece.

The four-row keyboard is 30 percent wider than the Bold's, stretching almost edge to edge. Each row is separated by a fret, which makes for a fast, accurate typing experience. My only complaint is that the Shift and Alt keys are swapped from where you'd instinctively find them, but it's easy enough to get used to that. Your fingers absolutely fly on these keys.

This keyboard is the benchmark for a keyboarded phone experience. Verizon has a few other keyboarded devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere II, but they're all horizontal sliders. That's a bit inferior because it requires you to rotate, slide, and hold the phone with two hands; it's nowhere near as immediate a typing experience as the traditional BlackBerry slab form factor, with buttons always at the ready. 

Phone Calls and Networking

Verizon's BlackBerry Q10 is a world phone, able to work on both Verizon's LTE and CDMA networks here at home and on HSPA networks abroad. Verizon sells the phone with a SIM card and its own plans, but you can get it unlocked after 60 days for international use. It supports Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, as well as Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, NFC, and mobile hotspot mode with the right service plan.

This Q10 is, oddly, tuned slightly louder than T-Mobile's Q10 is for voice calls, but at least that means you'll have enough volume for all circumstances. The bottom-ported speakerphone didn't pump out quite enough volume for outdoor use. Voice quality was okay, if a touch muddy. Noise cancellation was adequate but let a bit of background noise through.

The Q10 has comprehensive voice commands that work over Bluetooth, but I found that it had real trouble understanding even slightly unusual names. I couldn't get it to recognize either my own name or my wife Leontine's.

Battery life was pretty good. I got 10 hours, 15 minutes of talk time and more than a day of moderate use, which is better than I saw on the pre-production AT&T model I previewed. That's about on par with the Samsung Galaxy S III and noticeably better than the BlackBerry Z10 for Verizon. I got 5 hours, 2 minutes of video streaming over LTE, also a good result. I did notice that battery life declines significantly if you are in a weak or no-signal area.

BlackBerry 10 OS and Performance

The BlackBerry Q10 runs BlackBerry OS 10.1, a minor update to the BlackBerry 10 OS with a few new features and bug fixes, so check out that review for an in-depth look at the Q10's operating system. In short, the Q10 has a modern, competitive Web browser with Flash support; a built-in Microsoft Office compatible office suite; a unified inbox called BlackBerry Hub that also integrates Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; and an excellent note-taking app called Remember that syncs with Evernote, among other things.

BlackBerry's approach to its home screen is unique: The main home screen is a constantly changing list of your most recently used apps. Swipe to the right, though, and you get an iPhone-like pane of movable, organizable icons. Swipe left and you get all of your messages. There's nothing like Android's widgets, though.

The keyboard and the 10.1 OS update make the Q10 even better for messaging and office work. The most dramatic new feature is Instant Actions: Just start typing, and the BlackBerry will try to figure out what to do with what you're typing, whether it's a contact's name, the name of an app, or something you want to search on the Web. The feature reminds me of WebOS's beloved Just Type, and it's excellent.

There are hotkeys in many of the built-in apps. For instance, type a 'T' to go to the top and a 'B' to go to the bottom of lists. You can now customize notification sounds by account and contact, and support for invitees in Google Calendar accounts has been fixed.

BlackBerry OS still works better with Microsoft Exchange, Windows Live, and BlackBerry servers than Gmail, though. Since it's using IMAP to sync, Gmail messages arrive a few seconds to a few minutes later on a BlackBerry than on an Android device.

The Q10 uses a 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 Pro processor, and performance on the Browsermark and Sunspider Web browsing benchmarks was similar to midrange smartphones like the HTC One SV and VX. The latest, hottest devices like the Samsung Galaxy S 4 are using a new generation of more powerful processors, but they're also driving higher-resolution screens than the Q10 has. I couldn't find any slowdowns that I was willing to attribute to the processor rather than to poorly programmed third-party apps.

(Next page: Apps, Multimedia, and Conclusions)