BlackBerry PRIV Android Slider Priced At $749 Off-Contract, Ships November 16th
It's been an exciting week for BlackBerry, its fans, and those who've been wanting to see the company score some big success with a new smartphone release. Kicking the week off, the company's PRIV smartphone was shown off in good detail, which included specs in addition to a close-up of the hardware design. Continuing that, we learned yesterday about what "PRIV" is all about: privacy, and security. That isn't just marketing; BlackBerry has gone to pretty impressive lengths to make sure that PRIV is indeed the world's most secure Android consumer phone.
Being that PRIV sports high-end specs, a hardware keyboard, and a slew of BlackBerry enhancements, it was clear from the get-go that this was not going to be an inexpensive smartphone. And it's not. Thanks to a self-inflicted leak, BlackBerry revealed that PRIV will cost $749 USD. It's an unlocked phone, but will work only on AT&T and T-Mobile from the start. It's also expected to ship on November 16th.
This information was revealed through a pre-order page that apparently went live a bit too early. Once it hit the Web, BlackBerry was pretty quick to kill it off. This is the URL that originally showed it, so if you are anxious to pre-order one, you may want to check it later today.
It could be that pre-orders will not become available for a little while, though, and that this was an honest mistake. However, given some of the creative marketing ploys some companies have successfully run with, it could also be that this leak was done on purpose, to continue hyping the phone.
Despite its high-end specs and feature set, at $749, PRIV is likely to be a hard sell given the uncertainty of the company's success over the past number of years. It is nice, though, that the company didn't seem to skimp on anything: it wanted to create a high-end device, and has done so. Now we all anxiously await to see how well it sells.
