BlackBerry’s first Android-powered smartphone, the Priv, has gone on pre-order in the UK, at least at Carphone Warehouse. This morning the retailer posted a video detailing the new smartphone and now they have opened up pre-orders for the latest from BlackBerry. Pricing for the BlackBerry Priv is set at £579 for the SIM free model and £49 a month for those that want to subsidize their phone a bit. The Priv will be available beginning on November 6th, and of course pre-orders are open right now. Carphone Warehouse is claiming that they have exclusivity on the Priv, so if you’re in the UK and interested in a BlackBerry, you’ll have to visit Carphone Warehouse to get one.
Specs have also been outed in the pre-order process. While some specs we already knew, others are coming down the pipeline now. It looks like we have a 5.4-inch 2560×1440 resolution Super AMOLED panel here on the Priv. This gives us a 504PPI. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 chipset as well. Paired with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a microSD card slot that can theoretically support up to 2TB of storage. However, 2TB microSD cards don’t exist yet, so we’ll have to stick with the 200GB microSD card from Amazon. There is a 18MP camera around the back along with dual LED flash, with a 2MP front-facing camera for taking selfies and such. A bit low for the front-facing camera, compared to the other Android smartphones available today. As far as software goes, it’s Android 5.1.1 Lollipop (a bit disappointed that it’s not Marshmallow, but it will be interesting to see when the Priv does get Marshmallow), and it’s vanilla Android. There’s also a 3410mAh battery powering the show here.
In typical BlackBerry fashion, there is a physical QWERTY keyboard here that slides out. So users can choose to use a physical keyboard or stick with the on-screen keyboard. And since it’s Android, you can use just about any keyboard you want. From what we’ve seen of the Priv, there’s plenty of Google-y goodness here, but there is likely plenty of BlackBerry enterprise features, seeing as that is their customer base.
Currently there’s no word on the BlackBerry Priv availability in the US or anywhere else in the world. We will definitely keep you updated.