BlackBerry Z10 launched in India for Rs 43,490

The much awaited BlackBerry Z10 has finally made its way to India and will hit stores soon with a price tag of Rs 43,490. Pre-booked pieces of the Z10 will be made available tomorrow and retail pieces will be in the market either on February 28 or March 1. The phone was officially announced at a press conference in Mumbai today and Ranbir Kapoor was announced to be BlackBerry’s brand ambassador in India.

Sunil Dutt, Managing Director of BlackBerry India also mentioned that the BlackBerry Q10, the newest BlackBerry 10 device with a keyboard, will be hitting markets in April.

At the BlackBerry Z10 launch

The phone showed up days before the official launch on some online stores and was priced for around Rs 45,000. Flipkart is currently listing the BlackBerry Z10 for Rs 45,000, while Tradus has listed a few sellers that seem to be pushing the BlackBerry Z10 out for anywhere between Rs 44,200 and Rs 44,990.

Aircel has confirmed that it would be offering the Z10 for sale. Since the Z10 only requires a standard data plan and not the BlackBerry Data Plan, which was the case with previous handsets, it’s possible to use the handset on any Indian GSM network. Carriers may have different prices for data plans.

The new BB 10 OS offers a unified hub for all your notifications

A bunch of India-specific apps were also announced at the launch. PVR’s app for the BlackBerry 10 proved to be particularly interesting as it supports mobile payments through NFC. A ticket machine was placed on the stage and Group President and CEO of PVR Ltd, Pramod Arora, demonstrated how movie tickets could be bought.

The BlackBerry Z10 was unveiled along with the new BlackBerry 10 OS on January 30. The device has been available in the grey market ever since and it was priced initially at a whopping Rs 80,000. However, with the official launch drawing closer, the price fell steeply and is now available in the grey market at a decent Rs 42,000.

Here is a quick look at some of the highlights of the Z10:

• 4.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels
• LTE, 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi, NFC
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP
• 8 megapixel AF camera with 1080p recording, 2 megapixel front-facing camera with 720p recording
• 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 64GB via microSD
• MicroHDMI for AV out

The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and comes with 2GB of RAM. The BlackBerry Z10 will be kept powered on by an 1800mAh battery.

The BlackBerry Z10 offers exclusive access to BlackBerry World, which includes movies, music and TV shows for purchase and rentals. A new feature called BlackBerry Balance, ensures that your work account and your personal space are kept apart. when using your official account, the office administrator has no access to your SD card, keeping your private life segregated from your professional one.