Blackberry Priv goes up for Pre-Order with Price, Availability

Blackberry is always known for its keypad supportive surface. The company has always been a benchmark to the other firms. With Blackberry Priv being the latest and arguably strongest bet to save its tumbling market relevance, the Canadian company is featuring Android platform in the handset. Along with this, it has plans to embrace Google's mobile operating system to reboot its mobile efforts.

After so many leaks and rumors, the company has officially announced its Blackberry Priv that has been made available for purchase in United States. The smartphone is priced at $699 (roughly Rs. 45,500) and will be shipped from November 6. The pre-order registrations are open for the lovers to book their handset.

The previously listed Priv for $749 shows $50 slash in its range. The company with such a range constraint has noted that the smartphone will be sold out more on Verizon, Sprint or US Cellular networks in the United States. The one who is planning to purchase the handset will have to be on AT&T or T-Mobile networks.

The smartphone’s availability in India has not been uttered in words but it is, for now, available in UK and Canada for 559 GBP (roughly Rs. 55,700) and 899 CAD (roughly Rs. 44,500) respectively.

The slider based smartphone that has a slider which slides out from underneath the display in portrait mode, offers more security sophistications, a feature that BlackBerry is known for. The device features a 5.4-inch Oled QHD (2560 x 1440) display. It is powered by 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core SoC coupled with 3GB of RAM. Under the hoods, it keeps 32GB of built-in storage that can be expanded using a microSD card.

The handset comes with 3410mAh battery, which is rated to deliver up to 22.5 hours under "mixed usage". On the shooter’s side the handset has 18-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization capability and f/2.2 aperture and a 2-megapixel sensor placed upfront. The connectivity option includes 4G LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi and other standards. It runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop. The company’s executive has recently detailed the additional layers of security that they have baked on top of Android.  

This is the last effort the company is placing in the market, as the CEO John Chen has previously stated that if its mobile business doesn't return profits, he would have no choice but to shut the division. Thus, the device is expected to sell out more pieces in the coming weeks.