The struggling Canadian smartphones maker BlackBerry has launched yesterday its latest budget smartphone Z3 in Indonesia. This smartphone is the first device to be produced from the Canadian firm’s partnership with Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, which incidentally also manufacture gadgets for Apple.
This smartphone is targetted for the emerging markets and is reported to be headed for India. In Indonesia, the BlackBerry Z3 is priced around US$ 190, and it is expected that it will be priced aroud Rs. 13,000 in India.
The Z3 has a mediocre hardware details. It sports a 5-inch touchscreen with 540×960 resolution. The Z3 runs on BlackBerry OS 10.2.1, and is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, coupled with 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which can be expanded upto 32GB via microSD card. This smartphone is equipped with a 5MP rear camera with 1080p video recording and a 1.1MP front-facing camera. The Z3 is packed with a 2,500mAh non-removable battery, which is claimed to provide up to 15.5 hours talk time
and upto16.2 days standby time
The Z3 comes pre-loaded with BlackBerry’s popular BBM messaging service and for connectivity, this smrtphone supports GSM,GRPS/EDGE, Wi-Fi,Bluetooth and GPS.
The Z3 is the first smartphone introduced by BlackBerry after the appointment of its new chief executive John Chen. Whether the strategy of Mr. Chen to outsource the production and introducing the budget smartphone will work, only the coming weeks will make it clear.
BlackBerry may believe that its Z3 will sell because of its lower price, but of late the economical Android smratphones from the reputed brand like Motorola are making waves in emerging markets like India. The Moto G and Moto E are available for Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 7,000 with the latest pure Android OS. We are quite doubtful whether the customers in India will put Rs. 13,000 or more on Z3.
We have written earlier umpteen times that had BlckBerry and Nokia used Android OS on its devices then the story would have been different, but that was not to be. The Nokia story has already finished and let us see how BlackBerry takes forward its story, which appear to be heading for tragic end.
