Low-cost BlackBerry Z3 ‘Jakarta’

BlackBerry’s much-anticipated low-cost Z3 smartphone is now up for pre-order in Indonesia. The Canadian company has produced the Z3 in conjunction with Foxconn and it will go on sale on May 13.

The pre-order price of the BlackBerry Z3 is 2,199,000 Indonesian rupiahs which comes up to approximately Rs 11,500. If the Z3 ever makes it outside Indonesia and to India, expect it to retail in the Rs 14,000 range. At the moment, it’s a limited edition model available only for Indosat and XL customers. In fact, the Z3′s codename ‘Jakarta’ indicated that this smartphone is exclusively for the Indonesia market.

The BlackBerry Z3 was announced along with the Q20 or BlackBerry Classic during MWC. It runs BlackBerry 10 OS (version 10.2.1) and features a 5-inch qHD (540×960 pixels) display offering an aspect ratio of 16:9. It’s a full touch device, so there’s no QWERTY keypad on this one. In terms of processing power, the Z3 is well outfitted, sporting a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (MSM8230) processor alongside 1.5GB of RAM. Considering how closely BlackBerry and Foxconn worked on making this handset, we expect performance to be well-optimised for the hardware.

The other specs also point to the BlackBerry Z3′s low-end positioning. There’s a 5-megapixel autofocus rear camera and a 1.1-megapixel front shooter. Internal storage is capped at 8GB, which can be expanded further up to 32GB via microSD card. BlackBerry has gone with a beefy 2500mAh battery, which is rated to deliver up to 15.5 hours talk time and up to 384 hours of standby time and we think it will be very close to those numbers, given the non-demanding hardware. Connectivity options include the standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, GPS and NFC fare.

CEO John Chen said in a press note that the BlackBerry Z3 was designed “with our Indonesian customers in mind, to keep them productive and connected with family, friends and co-workers while on the move.”