Canada Receives Pre-Order Option for New BlackBerry Q10 Smartphone

BlackBerry has been shipping the Z10 smartphone in Europe and Canada this year since its launch at the end of January. Just a few weeks ago, we saw U.S. carriers offer the Z10, and while it’s the touchscreen-only model, the BlackBerry Q10 is the edition that has the very familiar and appreciated keyboard.

Although the screen is smaller to make room for the keyboard, the functionality of the phone is the same as the Z10. The Q10 has the same advantage by using the BlackBerry 10 platform. You will have the BlackBerry Hub, BBM, Balance and all of the other features that have been built into the BlackBerry 10 OS.

In the next couple of weeks, if you live in Canada, you can start to pre-order the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone. Today, in Burnaby, BC, Canada, Future Shop announced that it would soon start to take pre-orders for the Q10. Future Shop is Canada’s largest consumer electronics retailer, founded in 1982.

In 2001 the firm was purchased by Best Buy, though still does business under the Future Shop name as a separate division.

The new BlackBerry Q10 smartphone will be available at Future Shop on the Bell, Rogers, TELUS and Virgin Mobile Canada networks in the coming weeks. Customers can pre-order the new BlackBerry Q10 from any Future Shop store in Canada with a $50 deposit.

It should come as no surprise that you can also pre-order the Q10 smartphone from Best Buy Canada Ltd, running on the same carrier networks as Future Shop. The carriers themselves are also predictably offering pre-order options for the Q10. If you buy the smartphone from Rogers, it’ll cost you $199.99 with a three-year agreement.

But if you go with their monthly plan, the phone isn’t cheap, at $649.99. You can also pre-order the Q10 from TELUS online.

If you’re a fan of the old BlackBerry phones, you may have been waiting for the Q10 to come out. While I’m getting used to the touchscreen keyboard – and it does function nicely – I really did like the feel of the solid keyboard.

There is no mention as to when the Q10 will be available in the U.S. yet.