Hands-on with BlackBerry Z3: Should you consider this new budget contender?

We had earlier reported that BlackBerry Z3 will arrive in India when the global release is finalised. Now, the BlackBerry Z3 is all set to enter the Indian market next week by 25 June.

However, though the BlackBerry Z3 retails for the equivalent of Rs 12000 in Indonesia, there is a subsidy element there by local telcos. In India, telcos don’t subsidise smartphones and BlackBerry also faces duties, taxes and forex uncertainty. For instance, in the past couple of days the Indian rupee has seen its biggest fall in nearly four-and-a-half months thanks to the ongoing Iraq crisis and worries on oil imports. While BlackBerry executives were tight-lipped, retail sources said that they were receiving indicators of the Z3 being priced around Rs 14,000 or slightly higher depending on these issues. India is among the seven countries where the Z3 will be alunched, BlackBerry had told Tech2  at the official launch in Jakarta.  But the exact launch dates were not disclosed as the company wanted to see the response in Indonesia, before formulating marketing strategies for other regions.   The BlackBerry Z3 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC which has a dual-core processor along with 1.5GB of RAM.  It is a mid-range handset, featuring a 5-inch full touch display with a 540x960 resolution and running the latest version of BlackBerry 10 OS. Apart from that you have a 5MP rear camera and a 1.1MP front-facing camera.   The BlackBerry Z3 is expected to compete with the likes of the Moto G and Lumia 630, and also against the newest range of Windows Phone handsets by Micromax