Check our full review of the BlackBerry Q10 phone.
It has been almost three months since AT&T put the BlackBerry Z10 up for pre-order, and now it has also made its sister phone, the BlackBerry Q10, available too. A tweet alerted us AT&T was about to open the order books for BlackBerry’s QWERTY phone, saying that as of June 5 it would be for sale through the company’s website.
AT&T isn’t the first network in the U.S. to put the BlackBerry Q10 up for sale, as last week, Verizon announced it was accepting orders for the black and exclusive white Q10 models, again priced at $200. A couple of weeks before this saw Sprint also confirm the Q10, but only as a model coming soon, and not as a pre-order. At the time of writing, this hasn’t changed.
The BlackBerry Q10 is BlackBerry’s companion device to the touchscreen Z10, and is equipped with the same 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 8-megapixel camera, and 16GB of storage memory. The differences lie in the form factor, as the Q10 is a traditional QWERTY BlackBerry phone, equipped with a 3.1-inch AMOLED screen which boasts a 720 x 720 pixel resolution. Unlike the Z10, it will ship with the latest BlackBerry 10.1 software already installed.
Despite the QWERTY phone being the underdog these days, BlackBerry has two such devices on its books, and only one touchscreen phone. During BlackBerry Live last month the cheaper BlackBerry Q5 was announced, which has a 5-megapixel camera and a 1.2GHz processor. It’s expected to go on sale in certain markets in July.
Going back to the AT&T BlackBerry Q10, the pricing matches that of the BlackBerry Z10 at $200 with a two-year contract, and if you absolutely must pre-order the phone, then you can do so right now, and it’ll ship on June 18.
