Following our report yesterday about the imminent launch of the BlackBerry Q5 – the mid range QWERTY keyboard plus touch screen offering from BlackBerry, the company has gone ahead and launched the device in the country. Yesterday, there were reports flying in about the possibility of this device being priced between the Rs.25,000 and Rs.30,000 mark. BlackBerry has however done well to keep the price under Rs.25,000 (barely!). The Q5 can be yours for Rs.24,990.
For the price, you would almost get all the features of its elder sibling – the Q10 with some acceptable minor trade offs. Also to be noted is the fact that this is way cheaper than either of the two remaining BlackBerry handsets – the Q10 and the Z10 both of which still retail above the Rs.40,000 mark. Hence, for anyone looking out for a rather affordable (relatively speaking) BlackBerry, the Q5 fits the bill pretty well.
While we would have loved this one to have been even more affordable, we think 25k is a decent price for this device. Also, there could be a price drop on this handset in the months to come. Just to remind you, the Google Nexus 4 – the Android superphone is available for around the same price. BlackBerry needs to give us compelling reasons to spend our hard earned money on this device when we have other options like the aforementioned device available for around the same price.
All said, we hope BlackBerry would be bringing more OS 10 based devices in the future and that many of them would cater to the Rs.10 to Rs.20 k market. What say?!
