Two years ago, BlackBerry finally decided to launch a full touch mobile phone. Their first product was the Z10. Although the Z10 is an expensive big flop, BlackBerry at least has not given up the process of exploring full touch on BBOS. No, BlackBerry has launched another full touch mobile phone, called Leap, which is called "Leap" in Chinese.
Appearance design and workmanship:
In the front, BlackBerry is not the kind of mobile phone manufacturer that is famous for its design in the world in our mind. Recently, their Classic has proved that perfectly - it basically copied the shape of the popular Bold series, while other BlackBerry phones, even if they were labeled with Porsche Design, and PassPort that is sharp enough to cut your pants pocket, And that slide phone with curved screen, which has not been officially released, is just a different extension of an already very strange theme.
As a result, Leap is not the phone that can raise the flag of Blackberry to change its appearance design. Blackberry seems not to have any intention to make major changes in its design. Leap can find several curves borrowed from the previous Z3 (not Sony's Z3). In addition, Leap is a low-end touch screen phone for the developing market.
In addition to those curves, Leap is completely a rigid mobile phone, with a black and gray shell and straight corners. In general, Leap is a tool, and it is also a tool with no personality.
The design idea of "work at ease and don't wander" naturally has both good and bad ideas. On the one hand, Leap gives people the impression that it is well made, solid, strong and sturdy. You can even ask it to go out of the mountain to replace it when you can't find a hammer. The body is so hard that it will not have any torsion and bending. Even sitting on the bottom, it still looks pale. The surface of the material similar to rubber even makes you think that it will not matter if you drop it on the ground once or twice.
on the other hand, The appearance design of Leap also makes it very cumbersome in your hands. Yes, the dot matrix design on the back and a little arc on the edge can really give users a good sense of grip. But this phone is tall, wide and thick, and its weight of 170 grams is also considerable. And because of the racing frame, the size of the whole body is impressive for the 5-inch screen, Although the phone is not worried about falling, the user's thumb always crosses the wide border. And BBOS 10's operation is based on various gestures, which require users to draw from outside the screen to the screen, which also makes Leap border horse racing more obvious to users.
The volume button of the machine, surrounding the BlackBerry assistant button, is reasonably arranged on the upper right side of the fuselage, The USB interface is normally placed at the bottom of the fuselage. Since the back cover of the fuselage cannot be removed, the card slots of the SD card and SIM card are arranged under a cover on the left side of the fuselage. The back of the fuselage is the Blackberry logo and long glass. The glass is covered with an 8 megapixel lens and an LED fill light.
There is nothing wrong with these design elements, but these design elements together do not make Leap more attractive. If the body of Leap can be compact, the overall design will be more integrated with Leap's product positioning, but Leap is not compact, and it is hard to feel that Leap has given up its original cool appearance design for productivity.
Screen:
Leap is equipped with a 5-inch 720p screen, which is not inappropriate for such a mobile phone, and even quite expected. This screen is generally good, with vivid colors and moderate temperature. The black performance is the same as that of an ordinary LCD screen, and it is incomparable with AMOLED. The machine on hand has obvious light leakage on the top left side, However, this phenomenon is invisible when displaying different colors.
There is nothing wrong with the viewing angle, but the biggest problem of this screen is the visibility in the sun. Under direct sunlight, there is almost no difference between 50% brightness and 100% brightness. Although it is not completely unreadable, it does not mean that you do not need to find a slightly shady place to read the content on the screen.
System:
Leap runs BBOS 10. The specific version number has gone to 10.3.1. It is the same version as Classic. Even users who are not familiar with the BlackBerry system are not too strange, although this system relies more on gesture operation than other operating systems.
After unlocking the screen, there is the bland main interface. Slide to the left to open the application drawer. Inside the application, gesture operation is more important. Draw from the bottom of the screen to minimize the foreground application and lock it on the desktop as a part-time task manager, which means that users can easily find their most commonly used apps and view the apps running in the background, And the ability of this system to display messages in real time is also a little similar to the Windows Phone box. It is not difficult for users who often contact smart phones to get started, and there is no problem to get used to gesture operations.
Swipe right on the main interface to open BlackBerry Exchange, which is one of the main functions of BBOS 10. In a word, it is a combination of email client and notification bar. This is also my favorite BBOS 10 function. It combines all messages of users in one place, including text messages, email, Twitter updates and instant messaging messages, Even call logs, calendar item notifications, and even low battery prompts. Here, users can filter and adjust the priority of notifications, mark messages as unread or delete a message, or directly open Facebook to see which photos they have been circled. In particular, the ability to directly manage e-mail is very popular. But to be honest, BlackBerry is not a particularly "productive" function.
Some people may think that the BlackBerry Assistant is another main function of BBOS 10, especially on Leap, this function has special hardware buttons to enable it, which is basically the Siri Cortana and Google Now, you can instruct the voice assistant to change the phone settings, launch the application, send messages to contacts, find a place to eat for you, search for content on the Internet, etc. The virtual assistant has nothing special, and if you ask her how to eat grapes, it can also answer, but he may need to think for a few seconds, This is no different from the voice assistant on other platforms. In short, the daily use frequency of this function is not very high.
Another function in BBOS 10.3 is the BlackBerry Blend function. After installing the client on a PC or Android/iOS tablet, you can basically access the content in your phone from anywhere. In Blend, you can access contacts, calendar items and a compact BlackBerry collection, which means that even if your phone is not on you, The processor can also do some work.
The BlackBerry system is not as seamless and elegant as Apple's Continuity, but it is still a simple and feature rich application. Although it is not an inseparable function in general, it is still very comfortable to easily transfer photos from mobile phones to computers, so even for non enterprise users, Blend is still very convenient for you.
Camera:
Considering that Leap is a low-end mobile phone, the combination of an 8 megapixel main camera and a 2 megapixel front camera is not unexpected, and Leap is a mobile phone used to improve productivity, so we naturally do not expect the quality of photos, but the performance of Leap's main camera is unexpectedly good, and the interface is clean and refreshing, The flash can be modified on the main interface HDR、 There is no adjustment switch for ISO, exposure compensation and white balance. There is nothing wrong with the self timer, photo scale, or switching between panorama, continuous shooting and timeline modes. The only thing missing is the option to turn off the annoying camera sound.
Like other smart phone cameras, Leap's camera performs best in the daytime, with just the right automatic exposure and color saturation, accurate white balance and almost no shutter delay, HDR mode can add a lot of details to the picture. However, the synthesis time of HDR photos is a little long, and the camera starts to struggle under ordinary light conditions. The photos taken have a great chance of overexposure or underexposure, but it is strange that when the light is very poor, its performance is quite satisfactory, It will not cause the picture to lose the stereoscopic sense or full screen noise due to forced high exposure.
The 8 megapixel camera on Leap is certainly not a substitute for a serious camera, but when the time is right, it can take very satisfactory pictures. In general, Leap's camera is probably the best among smartphones of this level, so BlackBerry deserves our applause for this.
Performance and endurance:
Leap's internal hardware is identical to the Z10 two years ago: the 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor (MSM8960), With 2GB of memory, although Leap is the latest product of BlackBerry, it does not mean that BlackBerry must equip it with the latest and best processor, but it is a bit insulting to consumers to give you a Snapdragon S4 Plus in 2015. Although I don't feel that the performance is not enough in daily life, when I think of the outdated processor used in my mobile phone, Still very sad.
In actual use, your fingers can freely dance on the Leap screen. The only drawback is that due to the processor's performance limitations, it still requires a little waiting time when starting some applications or email clients. The browser is smooth enough, so the processor may be really outdated, However, the performance is still sufficient for Leap.
In terms of game performance, Leap's performance is not good. Although the resolution is only 720p, when running GT Racing 2, Leap will be stuck as long as there are more than two cars on the screen, so... well, it is just a productivity tool.
The 2800 mAh battery equipped with Leap is quite durable in actual use. When 50% brightness is turned on, the screen is lit for 11 hours. Although when the power is lower than 20%, Leap will automatically turn on the power saving mode. If it is used normally, Leap will have no problem in charging for two days at a time.
Summary:
On its own, Leap is not a bad phone. It just has nothing to boast about. Its design is mediocre. It basically follows the appearance of the little known BlackBerry Z3. The frame of the racehorse makes the phone not compact. For every advantage of this phone, there is always a "but" followed, The 720p screen performs poorly, and the processor configuration is outdated. However, the 8 megapixel camera is unexpectedly good, and its endurance is highly praised.
If you are an iron fan of BlackBerry, you can still consider "upgrading" your BlackBerry. The price of about 2000 yuan is not expensive for such a phone. If you can choose Android phones or buy lower end BlackBerry phones at the same price, but if you want to buy a tool with medium price that can improve productivity, Then Leap can be perfect. Otherwise, let's look at other brands of mobile phones.
advantage:
Excellent endurance;
The 8 megapixel camera performs well;
BBOS 10 has outstanding productivity.
Disadvantages:
Huge volume;
Poor screen;
Configuration is out of date;
Lack of application.
Figure/text from
