BlackBerry Limited, (NASDAQ: BBRY)- US pre-orders for the Canadian phone maker’s smartphone, the Priv, have been initiated for the price of US$749 while shipping will start on November 16.
BlackBerry’s upcoming Android phone has been in the news for months now, since it constitutes a major move for the company to abandon its own OS for Google’s Android mobile operating system. The device was formerly known as Venice -at least that was its codename- while contacts close to the company are pretty confident about Priv being its final name.
According to the company itself, Priv will be offering robust security of the user’s personal info- hence the name Priv.
Moreover, the handset appeared on BlackBerry’s website for a brief moment, revealing the sole info we were not aware of so far- release date and price. Evidently, Priv will retail for US$749 unlocked, while the shipping procedure will be initiated on November 19. We should also note that the smartphone will be available under AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks exclusively.
Leaked images indicate that Priv will sport a rather elegant design, a polycarbonate build, with the back of the device featuring carbon layers. BlackBerry will be including its signature – and outdated – physical slide keyboard that will essentially pop out from underneath the display.
In terms of specs, the Priv is expected to boast a curved 5.43-inch 2560 x 1440 pixels resolution AMOLED display with 540 ppi covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for ultimate scratch resistance. The Priv will be powered by Qualcomm’s MSM8992 Snapdragon 808 housing six cores; two Cortex-A57 clocked at 1.8 GHz and four Cortex-A53 at 1.44 GHz, coupled with Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB of RAM. Internal storage will be 32GB, expandable via microSD up to a whopping 200GB.
Camera wise, the primary sensor will shoot at 18-megapixel packing Schneider-Kreuznach optics, optical image stabilization, autofocus, dual-LED (dual tone) flash and HDR. The front camera will shoot at 2-megapixels. In addition, the back camera’s video resolution will be 2160p at 30 frames per second.
The connectivity selection of the Priv offers 4G LTE antennas, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1 and microUSB v2.0. To accommodate the stellar 5.43-inch, BlackBerry will reportedly be implementing a 3410 mAh battery, which is fair enough for the particular spec sheet.
Furthermore, the BlackBerry Priv will come with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop straight out of the box. Neither BlackBerry or Google have mentioned the handset’s eligibility to the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update.
With HTC’s $399 high-end One A9 Aero handset hitting the markets soon, BlackBerry will have to pull great efforts thus convincing consumers that the Priv is worth the $749 premium.
Are you planning on picking up the BlackBerry Priv? Let us know in the comments below.
Via: Droid-Life, ZDNet, GSMArena
Source: BlackBerry store
Featured image credit: BlackBerries.ru (Russian)
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