AT&T will begin taking consumers’ orders for BlackBerry’s new flagship Z10 phone tomorrow, reports Bloomberg, ahead of the device going on sale March 22.
The Z10 will sell for $199.99 with a two-year agreement, AT&T said today. It is the first phone to run BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system.
With the new phone, BlackBerry and AT&T are looking to entice customers into ditching the physical keyboard that was once BlackBerry’s hallmark in favor of a touch-screen interface. The new BlackBerry is also the first to operate over AT&T’s 4G LTE network. The touch-screen device has a 4.2-inch high-resolution display and an 8-megapixel camera that records 1080p HD video.
T-Mobile USA began taking its own Z10 preorders today for business customers. The first devices will be received by those users as early as this week, T-Mobile said in an e-mailed statement. The Z10 will be widely available to consumers by the end of the month, the company said.
BlackBerry devices, which once dominated smartphone sales in the U.S., have fallen out of favor as Apple’s iPhone and Android devices have come to dominate. The new BlackBerry 10 software aims to take them on.
The company unveiled the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10, which includes a physical keyboard, at an event in January.
