The Blackberry Z3 smartphone is here. The phone will be priced at Rs 15,990, but buyers on Flipkart and Mobile Store will get a Rs 1,000 voucher for the first month. Prebooking will start today.
By Nandagopal Rajan
The phone will also offer a lot of content for the Indian audience and will include apps like Wonobo, a Google Streetview-like mapping serving covering top cities. The phone also comes with a keyboard that is as good with Hindi and Hinglish as it is with English.
Blackberry India MD Sunil Lalvani said the phone has been designed keeping today’s India and its requirements in mind. “This is the first phone to come out of our partnership with Foxconn,” he said, adding that five-year strategic partnership with the Taiwanese manufacturer shows they were not taking away focus from devices.
Lalvani said the VAT structures and Customs Duty does not allow the company to launch the phone in India at the $200 price point it is sold in Indonesia now.
The Z3 is a 5-inch phablet that runs the Canadian smartphone maker’s latest BB 10.2.1 operating system. This is the first phone for which Blackberry is touring the Android compatibility of its new OS.
This means the phone will give users the security and ease of use Blackberry is known for along with the app ecosystem that Android brings to its devices. Incidentally, within a few months BB 10 users will be able to access the Amazon app store directly from their devices.