White BlackBerry Z10 up for prebooking for Rs 45,000 on HomeShop18

The white variant of the newly-launched BlackBerry Z10 is currently up for pre-booking on HomeShop18 for Rs 45,000. Those interested can head over to the store to pre-book their unit. The phone is currently in stock and the site lists the delivery period as 12-13 working days.  

White BlackBerry Z10 up for prebooking

The company launched the Z10 smartphone in the country on February 25 this year with a price tag of Rs 43,490. At that range, its specification sheet starts to pale in comparison to the other similarly-priced handsets. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S3 was launched in the middle of last year at around the same price as the BlackBerry Z10. However, it had a quad-core CPU along with a 720p screen and is currently retailing for Rs 28,000.

A bunch of India-specific apps were also announced at the BlackBerry Z10 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. 

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.

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.