BlackBerry Z3 hasn’t been seen much in the flesh ever since it was unveiled back at the Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. The company’s new low-end smartphone has been designed and developed in collaboration with Foxconn. Its initially destined for emerging markets, though BlackBerry has confirmed that an LTE variant will make its way to markets like the U.S. A picture has popped up online in which the BlackBerry Z3 is compared against the Z10 and Z30.
Following last year’s massive inventory write down, BlackBerry decided to partner with Foxconn for five years. Under the partnership, Foxconn will design and develop low-end devices while BlackBerry itself would focus on the high-end models. The Z3 is the first fruit of this partnership, and its design language is quite different from the one laid down in last year’s Z-series.
Instead of going for rounded edges and curves, the Z3 opts for straight lines and sharp edges. Some might even think it resembles Nokia phones, or even Sony’s, since both have launch some pretty popular phones with such sharp edges. It will be interesting to see what BlackBerry opts for in the high-end models, the company has already confirmed that QWERTY keyboard devices are going to resemble their ancestors quite a bit.
Its going to retail under $200. With a 5-inch display, possibly 720p, the smartphone will run BlackBerry 10 OS version 10.2.1 and will be first launched exclusively in Indonesia.
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