Hasta La Gadget!

The BlackBerry keyboard is dead, long live the BlackBerry keyboard. Despite the full throttle touchscreen focus of its new mobile platform, BlackBerry 10, the company formerly known as RIM has not forgotten its most fervent fans’ adoration of those little plastic keys and has thrown them a bone — or rather a handset.

Meet the hybrid BlackBerry Q10 (below right, next to the full-touch Z10), a touchscreen smartphone that also packs in a full physical Qwerty keyboard for those who just can’t bring themselves to stop stroking plastic keys. The lack of an optical nav pad may still cause long-time BlackBerry lovers a spot of angst.

The company showed off the Q10 at the launch of BB10 today. “We know there are a lot of physical keyboard lovers out there,” said CEO Thorsten Heins.

The Qwerty-packing handset resembles the N Series BB10 device which leaked in a promo video last September – with a ‘classic’ BlackBerry shape housing a relatively generously sized touchscreen that’s nonetheless considerably smaller than the Z10 full-touch device that RIM also unboxed today.

Another difference between the Z10 and the Q10 is that the latter necessarily lacks some of the ‘smart keyboard’ software features found on BB10 full-touch devices. The full touchscreen keyboard includes a predictive text feature that positions suggested words above the next letter you’d have to type to spell the word out — so you can quickly swipe up to add the whole word. That smart positioning just isn’t possible with plastic keys getting in the way.

The Z10′s virtual keyboard also customises to its owner in a way that the Q10′s physical Qwerty never can: the central strike points of each key can move by up to half a key to adjust to your particular typing style (with the aim of reducing typos). Again, good luck trying to wear down plastic keys to suit your sausage fingers.

As with the Z10, the Q10′s BB10 software analyses your messaging history to learn more about the language you use — and will apparently incorporate what it learns about your vocab and slang into its next-word suggestions.

Despite RIM’s efforts to oust the old and usher in the new with BB10 it’s not a surprise the company has kept a toehold in the physical keyboard camp. Back in September Heins reaffirmed RIM’s commitment to keys, telling attendees at the BlackBerry Jam developers’ conference that both full touchscreen and physical keyboard BB10 devices would be unboxed. Today he made good on that pledge.

Heins also described the keyboard as one of the main points of focus for RIM in BB10, along with productivity, reliability, security and multi-tasking.

Although the Z10 will be available in the U.K. from tomorrow, in Canada from February 5 and in the U.S. from March – with an estimated retail pricing of $149.99 on a three year contract – there’s no word (yet) on the Q10′s availability or pricing.

BlackBerry (formerly RIM) has just unveiled the BlackBerry 10 device that, let’s face it, many of the faithful really want: the keyboard-equipped Q10. It mates the QWERTY hardware input that BlackBerry fans have known and loved while including a 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM. Yes, it will have LTE, and there’s already confirmed plans from AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and Canadian providers to carry it — though there’s no firm release date or pricing. Check our hands-on with the Q10 for early impressions.

Update: During a post-event Q&A, Thorsten Heins said that we could likely expect the Q10 to reach the US sometime in April.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, RIM

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RIM (now just called “BlackBerry”) has officially unveiled their new BlackBerry 10 devices at its launch event in NYC (with satellite launch events in several other locations around the world), and they’re just now announcing pricing details, and we’re also gathering announcements from carriers about pricing and availability of the new BlackBerry Z10 and Q10.

Vodafone UK will offer the BlackBerry Z10 starting tomorrow, and users can get it for as low as nothing depending on the wireless plan they choose. Vodafone UK is touting the Z10 as the carrier’s first “4G-ready” device. Other UK carriers, such as EE and Three, have also announced some details. EE will offer the new phone starting tomorrow, and will be priced at 49 pounds under the two-year 41-pound-per-month plan. Three, on the other hand, has only announced that the Z10 is “coming soon.”

Verizon will also be offering both the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 in its stores. The carrier will sell the Z10 at a price of $199 after signing a new two-year contract, and it will be compatible with Verizon’s 4G LTE network as well. It will launch sometime in mid-March. Pricing for the Q10 has not been disclosed yet, so stay tuned for that.

T-Mobile will have the Z10 in stores as well, although they didn’t announced any pricing or availability details — those will be coming at a later date, according to the carrier. AT&T will also have both the Z10 and Q10 in stock, but will announced pricing and availability at a later time. It’ll be the first BlackBerry device to run on the carrier’s 4G network.

We’ll post up more details here as we get them. The launch event is wrapping up and carriers have begun sending out details, but a lot of them are announcing pricing and availability at a later date, so we’ll update you when we hear about more details on this front. In the meantime, check out any of our BlackBerry 10 news that you might have missed.

BlackBerry Z10 retail pricing run-down is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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