Hoping to compete in the ever-growing smartphone market, Blackberry announced that its newest phone, The Blackberry A10, will be the brand's new flagship smartphone.
CNET reports the all touch-screen phone will be the successor to the Z10. The A10 will be the top-tier device and the all-touch screen Z10 and keyboard-equipped Q10 will be the brand's middle tier while the Q5 will act as the lowest, most affordable tier of Blackberry phones.
Blackberry faced criticism in the growing smartphone market for being too reliant on a physical keyboard. In response, the company recently launched the Z10 along with the BlackBerry 10 operating system that showed off an all touch screen interface. That was followed by the more traditional looking Q10 that came with a BlackBerry's standard keyboard.
The A10 is the company's attempt to keep up with more popular smartphones like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy.
Already backing the BlackBerry A10 is U.S. carrier Sprint Nextel. They will be selling the phone to their customers in November of this year according to a source with knowledge of the company's launch plans.
If you aren't a Sprint Nextel user but are still interested in BlackBerry's new flagship phone, don't fret yet. Sprint doesn't have an exclusive contract with the company so the A10 will likely roll out to AT&T and Verizon sometime soon.
AT&T and Verizon were the only ones to pick up the Z10 and Q10. Sprint reportedly passed on the two phones because it was aware of what was in BlackBerry's pipeline and decided that the A10 was well worth the wait.
According to CNET, BlackBerry was pressured to unveil the A10 at last month's BlackBerry Live conference. However, the company wasn't ready to make the announcement and likely didn't want to steal any thunder away from the Q10 which will be available on other carriers besides T-Mobile shortly.
