Having spent some time with the HTC One and BlackBerry Z10, I want to share a comparison of the user interface of two of the most in-demand smartphones on the market. Both are great smartphones, but which has the better user interface? Let's take a look.
The BlackBerry Z10 features a 4.2-inch display, while the HTC One features a larger 4.7-inch display. Each smartphone offers a beautiful display to use while navigating, but there can only be one winner in this comparison.
The HTC One runs HTC Sense 5 on top of Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, which allows HTC to customize Android by laying a skin on top of the mobile operating system. HTC Sense 5 is the best version of Sense that HTC has ever released. There are no noticeable slowdowns while using the skin, as previously seen in earlier HTC smartphones. HTC does an amazing job of making Android easier to use for consumers with Sense 5.
A major new feature in the HTC One and Sense 5 is a feature called Blink Feed. Blink Feed posts an always-updating social and news feed to the home screen of the HTC One. You'll have constant updates on your home screen, which can be a little distracting at first. Users can opt not to use Blink Feed by never setting it up, which will enhance battery life by not accessing data connections.
The HTC One is an Android smartphone and uses the same basic user interface found in almost every other Android smartphone. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is still locked into Android Jelly Bean's UI for the most part. Don't get me wrong, Jelly Bean offers some amazing features, but the user interface still works like previous builds of Android in many ways.
The BlackBerry Z10 user interface is a breath of fresh air in terms of offering something completely new and innovative. It certainly helps that BlackBerry 10 is a brand new mobile operating system. Since BlackBerry designs its BlackBerry 10 operating system and its own smartphones, as Apple does, it doesn't need to depend on another company to create the operating system and have strict rules to follow like Android licensees do.
The BlackBerry Z10, in my opinion, has the most innovative mobile operating system found on any current smartphone platform. It uses a gesture-based interface to navigate and access features of BB 10 and they're very easy to learn. One you pick them up you will find yourself getting to apps, emails, settings, and more with a few simple gestures. The gestures become second nature in no time and you'll be zipping around the Z10. The BlackBerry Z10 is also, in my opinion, the best keyboard available on any smartphone.
The BlackBerry Z10 also uses features borrowed from Android and Windows Phone, but they are not exact copies in the way that they work. When Z10 opens applications, swiping up will automatically pin the app to a home screen, and if the app supports it, it will automatically update information, making it easy to just glance at a running app to see information. It's part of the way BlackBerry 10 handles multitasking. You can simply close the app by tapping a small X icon on the bottom right of the running app. This is similar to both Windows Phone's Live Tiles and Android's widgets.
I have found that I prefer the user interface of the BlackBerry Z10 to the HTC One. I think the HTC One is the best Android smartphone ever released, but in terms of user interface, the BlackBerry Z10 offers more, especially in terms of getting to apps and features in a faster, more intuitive way. The BlackBerry Z10, in my opinion, wins the user interface comparison.
