First Android smartphone puts BlackBerry back in the game
The Priv ticks all the boxes but its hefty price makes it hard to compete with cheaper devices or more popular brands
It was never going to be as popular as the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, or Apple iPhone 6s and 6s Plus or the LG V10, but BlackBerry’s latest release, Priv, is turning a few heads not least because it is the Canadian mobile phone maker’s first Android smartphone.
It’s probably the best decision the Waterloo-based company could have made after some seriously bad ones in recent years. First it did away with its physical keyboard (with the Z10), a feature that had won BlackBerry legions of business users; and when it decided to bring that back (with the Q10), it left out the popular trackpad. Its operating system, OS 10 (which replaced the OS 7), is notoriously counter-intuitive and leaves a lot to be desired.
With the Priv, the company has finally come up with something that people might actually want: a smartphone that has both a physical keyboard running on a popular OS with a proper app store (you can finally install Instagram on this BlackBerry via Google Play).
Hong Kong is the first market in Asia to get the Priv after it was released in North America earlier this month. Will this marriage between BlackBerry and Android reverse the fortunes of the ailing company? Many in the industry believe this is its last ditch attempt to come up with something that works.
Hardware
