Color us surprised: it turns out the BlackBerry Z10 is one of the more formidable challengers in the iPhone 5 vs. Everyone Else wars. We did a hands-on review of the Blackberry Z10 (Verizon version) at Thursday's Pepcom conference in New York City and some of us were pretty impressed.

The Blackberry Z10 price was cut in half on Friday to $99, but we would have called the phone a good value even at its release-date pricing of $199. Though we can only speak for the Verizon version of the BlackBerry Z10, during our review the device performed quite smoothly, without any noticeable hardware or data connectivity lag.     

The super-hyped BlackBerry Z10 keyboard did not disappoint during our review, although it might be fair to say that it's not quite as revolutionary as some BlackBerry stalwarts might lead you to believe.  The autosuggest function, as on many other smartphones, is less than perfect, but unobtrusive enough to not get in the way of the keyboard itself. It's difficult to say exactly what it is that sets the BlackBerry Z10 keyboard apart — it's pretty comparable to an iPhone 5 keyboard — but after using it for only a few minutes, my dexterity was more or less on par with what I'm accustomed to using Apple products. 

Aside from the actual BlackBerry Z10 hardware, the BB10 operating system is itself an achievement. The OS is streamlined and well-optimized for the hardware it runs on. The BlackBerry Z10 Verizon version also demonstrates snappy data connectivity. In a conference hall full of hundreds of smart devices, the Z10 did not appear to suffer from any data lag the way an iPhone might while in the company of many other iPhones.

The BlackBerry Z10 spec sheet is also nothing to scoff at. The Z10 runs on a 1.5GHz Qualcomm dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable internal storage (via microSD). The 4.2-inch display has a resolution of 1,280 x 768 and produces 335 ppi.