Blackberry launches its first Android powered smartphone – Priv in India at Rs 62,990

Consumers who were waiting for the last few months can finally get their hands on Blackberry’s first Android powered smartphone – the Priv. The Canadian tech giant has finally launched the handset in the Indian market at a steep pricing of Rs 62,990 and it will be available from January 30 throughout the country on Amazon.in and the retail stores.

Blackberry Priv was announced in October 2015 in few selected markets and combines the well-known Blackberry hardware, security features Android app ecosystem. The smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop out of the box and the company is in the process of sending Android 6.0 Marshmallow to the handset. Though the handset runs Android underneath and comes with the Google app-ecosystem, Blackberry Priv does not let users to use a different Android launcher that are available in the Google Play store. So unlike other Android device you can’t customise the handset as per your choice.

As far as the security goes, the Priv runs custom Blackberry-modified version of Android with a number of security features and enhancements such as OS verification that ensures your device is running the trusted Blackberry OS, and integrity protection to ensure that your device is running in a safe state.

The Priv comes with a 5.4-inch dual-curve Quad HD display packing a resolution of 2560×1440. There’s a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor underneath coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage that can be expanded by up to 2TB. The smartphone also integrates the customary Blackberry qwerty keyboard with all the shortcuts that you would expect from a Blackberry handset. Moreover, the physical keypad can also be used for scrolling while browsing the web pages on the smartphone. In the camera department, BlackBerry is using an 18MP rear camera that can shoot 4k videos at 60FPS. The front has a 2MP camera for selfies. There’s a large sized 3,410 mAh battery on board.

So what do you think of the price of Blackberry Priv? Do let us know through the comments below.