The BlackBerry Q10 will be available on the carrier Rogers on Apr. 30 for $199.99 on a three-year contract, according to a leaked screenshot. Pre-orders are open now.
The Q10 is the sibling phone to BlackBerry's wildly popular Z10 smartphone. The Z10 is all-touch, while the Q10 has a more traditional physical QWERTY keyboard that BlackBerry loyalists may prefer.
Rogers will have both the black and white versions of the Q10 available, and it will have the 2,600 MHz band enabled, in addition to the usual AWS LTE frequencies. It will also be available for $649.99 on a month-to-month plan.
If this news turns out to be accurate, it means the BlackBerry Q10 will be available in both the U.K. and Canada, but there is still no word about a U.S. release date.
BlackBerry took its time rolling out the Z10 to different markets before it introduced the phone to the United States. It's a common tactic -- testing the phone before it hits the United States, often the largest market for many mobile manufacturers.
If BlackBerry is continuing this practice, it could be another month before we see the Q10 stateside. But there is also incentive for BlackBerry to speed the release. Several high-end smartphones are about to hit the U.S. market, like the Samsung Galaxy S4, and BlackBerry should want to avoid the competition.
In addition, many BlackBerry fans are impressed by the Z10 but are holding out for a keyboard. If they are forced to wait much longer, they might just grab a Droid instead.
The BlackBerry Q10 features a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 plus processor, 2GB of RAM, a 3.1-inch 720x720 touchscreen display, an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video, 16GB of internal storage, an SD card slot for up to another 64GB of storage, a full physical QWERTY keyboard and runs the newly revamped BlackBerry 10 operating system.
Check back for the latest information on the BlackBerry Q10 as it becomes available.