Despite the current worrying state of BlackBerry’s mobile affairs that sees it hunting for buyers, the company is sticking to its mobile guns by unveiling its latest BlackBerry 10 powered smartphone - the Z30.    

Like the Z10 (review), the Z30 is an all-touch smartphone that bumps up the display real estate of the Z10 from 4.2" (768 x 1280; 355 ppi) to 5" on the Z30. The new smartphone’s display utilises a AMOLED panel that should result in enhanced colour saturation as on the Q10 (review). BlackBerry did not state whether the larger screen of the Z30 also bumps the display resolution up to full HD as seen on rival devices such as the Galaxy S4 (review) and HTC One (review).

Equally lacking in details is information on the make of the SoC (system-on-a-chip) powering the Z30, as BlackBerry only stated that it is a 1.7 GHz chip that sports quad-core graphics, which should deliver a performance boost over the dual-core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8960 chipset doing duty in the Z10 and Q10.

Other features

Also onboard the Z30 is the biggest battery (2880 mAh) found on any of the BlackBerry 10 operating handsets. According to BlackBerry, this battery will deliver up to 25 hours of mixed usage in combination with the battery enhancements provided by BlackBerry 10.2.

New antenna technology find its way to the smartphone which dynamically tunes reception to give users better connectivity within areas with low or bad signal reception. The firm added that BlackBerry Paratek Antenna should provide users with snappier data transfers as well as fewer dropped calls in these low signal areas as well.

HTC and LG are not the only companies aiming to deliver an enhanced audio performance on their smartphones as, the Z30 offers stereo audio and BlackBerry natural sound in the Z30. The latter is a new technology that makes BBM Voice and BBM Video chats sound more natural and realistic, by allowing users to hear nuances as well as variations in tone.  

To the point

BlackBerry stated that the Z30 smartphone will be available as of next week from select carriers and retailers in the UK and the Middle East. All other global regions should expect to see the smartphone arrive in time for the holiday shopping season. No local release or pricing info is available yet.

The company added that subject to carrier approvals, BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2 is expected to become available for the BlackBerry Z10, Q10 as well as the Q5 (review) by mid-October.

Read our review of the BlackBerry 9720 smartphone here, a more affordable touch-and-type smartphone running on BlackBerry 7 OS that is targeted at QWERTY fans and BIS addicts.