BlackBerry Launches Q5 At 24,990; First Impressions

 

BlackBerry had released Q5, its most affordable Smartphone in the country powered by BlackBerry 10 O.S. With the QWERTY-keypad Q5, the Canadian manufacturer is trying to address criticism raised by high pricing of its earlier BB10 models and also to boost the low-paced sales.

With the new release, BlackBerry now has three phones in the BB10 portfolio-Q5, Q10 and Z10. Q5 borrows keyboard layout from BlackBerry’s earlier model Curve. The device however doesn’t have much difference from its costlier sibling Q10 except that it’s coming in a cheap package. Instead of the Q10’s Aluminum chassis, Q5 is made out of plastic, but sturdy. At 720*720, the 3.1 inch touch screen also has the same resolution as Q10, but the AMOLED display is replaced with an LCD screen.

Considering the internal specs, both Q10 and Q5 uses same Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM. However, the clock speed of Q5’s processor is 1.2 GHz compared to Q10’s 1.5 GHz. The biggest disappointment is the primary camera, which is only 5 Megapixel.   Even though the device is not as luring as Q10, at half the price Q5 offers value for money to a BlackBerry loyalist. But BlackBerry will have a hard time pushing this not so trendy Smartphone amidst the Androids, even at this price tag.

The company had recently reduced price of its full touch Z10 in the wake of competition it face from Apple and other high end Androids.