Blackberry launches its own Personal Assistant with BB 10.3

When every smartphone OS whether it be iOS, Android or Windows Phone is getting a virtual personal assistant, Blackberry, the initiator of the smartphone realm was still lagging behind in terms of features and functionality. Sure they do have expertise in security but lack of apps and coping up with rivals in terms of functionality, Blackberry is lagging far behind other smartphone OSes.

Its not been much time since they announced the awkwardly shaped Blackberry Passport, they have today announced the launch of their own Personal Assistant stating its been worked for BB 10.3 on Passport. Again, coping up with rivals.

See the post here.

The official Blackberry blog says its a voice activated feature but it remains to be seen if its voice activated as Google Now on the Moto X. 

It would not be as functional or contextual as Siri or Google Now but it can help you manage simple tasks like searching emails and calendar, finding out what's trending on twitter, or sending trivia night invitations. It does learn about you by how you interact with it.

It can also set reminders for about meetings, appointments or your anniversary. While driving you can ask it to read your latest emails and it does so. You can also ask it to mark the email as unread without even touching your Passport. 

Doing tasks that require hardware interaction is still absent in Google Now while Blackberry Assistant supports this functionality.You can turn on-off your flash light and maybe you can do other tasks too like controlling bluetooth and wifi. Changing profiles should be an ease too.

Now the most important question that remains here is whether or not this feature come to other Balckberry phones running BB 10.2.?

With so many leaks about upcoming technology around the world, it is quite surprising as to how Blackberry was able to cover it all up until now. Maybe its all about Security then. 

Nexus 5 vs the Blackberry Z30

Blackberry is having a tough time with so much competition from the Apple iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone platform and Google's Android served by various OEMs. Also with the new OSes like Ubuntu touch and Firefox OS coming to market, and various governmental organisations ditching blackberry in favour of Androids and iOS devices, Blackberry-the once ruler of the smartphone market- seems to have no chance against its competition. Add to that the failure of its Z10 and Q10 phones.

But all this failure hasn't put back Blackberry's hopes to again nurture the smartphone market. And the Sept 18, 2013 launch of the Z30 is a proof of that. While its competitor and the ruler of smartphone market- Google - also launched its latest and greatest smartphone with the newest flavour of Android. The Nexus 5 with Android KitKat launched on Oct 31, 2013. Here's a detailed comparison of the hardware of both these smartphones.

Network & Connectivity.



Both these phones comes equipped with 4G LTE connectivity. The Z30 supports WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n while Nexus 5 supports WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. Both has WiFi direct and hotspot capabilities. Both phones comes with Bluetooth 4.0 LE and NFC.

Display.

This is the factor that the geeks keep in mind while buying a new phone. The Nexus 5 has a 4.95" True HD IPS+ screen with a resolution of 1920*1080 (FHD) setting the pixel density at 445 ppi.

 On the other hand Blackberry opted to go with an Amoled 1280*720 (HD) display on the 5" screen and keeping a low pixel count at 294 ppi. The Nexus 5 does come with a Gorilla Glass 3 while the Z30's screen isn't specified.

Storage.

The Nexus 5 has 2 options to choose from. A 16GB and a 32GB version. Both has 2GB of RAM. While the Z30 comes with only 16GB storage, it does give an option to expand the storage with a microSD card, unlike the Nexus 5.

Camera.

Both the phones come equipped with an 8mp image sensor at the back. The front camera does make the Z30 seem better for taking selfies in comparison to the Nexus 5. The Z30 has a 2mp front camera while the Nexus 5 has a mere 1.3mp front camera. Both the phones support 1080p video recording with 30fps but the Z30 has the image and video stabilization which is no where to be found on the Nexus 5.

Operating System.

The Nexus 5 being Google's flagship phone comes pre-installed with the latesh version of android. When the Phone launched, it was loaded with Android 4.4 KitKat. But due to various camera and speaker glitches, the updates have made it jump to 4.4.2. On the other end, Z30 comes with BB 10.2.1 as of now. 

This is the part of debate because Android has a fully grown eco-system while Blackberry isn't having much of the developer support. But to fight this scarcity of apps, BB 10.2.1 natively supports any of the Android ported apks. No doubt there will be several features not working with the ported apps. But come on, Something is better than Nothing.

Fire-Power.

The Nexus 5 packs a Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.3GHz with an Adreno 330 GPU. While the Z30 packs a less powerful Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with Adreno 320 GPU. Both phones has the usual set of sensors like compass, gyroscope, proximity sensor, accelerometer but the Nexus 5 steals the game with its barometer sensor.

Battery.

The Nexus 5 has a 2300 mAh battery that the manufacturer LG promises to give a talk time of 17 hrs on 3G. Meanwhile, the Z30 has a 2880 mAh battery that promises 18 hrs of talk time on 3G. This is quite strange considering the fact that Z30 has a less power hungry display and a larger capacity battery. But only real world tests can show who the real winner is.

So at the end its your own choice either to choose Android with its fully growm app eco-system, or go with blackberry and its super secure (not so much after the NSA revelations) phone.

[polldaddy poll=7907264]