A touchscreen BlackBerry is nice, sure, but what defined Research In Motion's iconic brand (now known simply as "BlackBerry") is the portrait QWERTY keyboard. And here it is, the BlackBerry Q10. Unfortunately, we aren't able to play too much with the device; representatives are calling this a "controlled demo" and are being very strict with how much interaction we can have with it for now.
As such, we're not being shown any of the applications that are purported to be optimized for this 720 x 720 square display. The performance was a smooth as what we saw with the BlackBerry Z10 and the keyboard is reminiscent of the BlackBerry Bold — "clicky" in just the right ways, but again, we can't really use it too much at the moment. The back of the device is as Thorsten Heins described: it has a rubbery, soft-touch feel even though it has that oh-so-popular carbon fiber weave design. We got to take the cover off of the back and take a peak at the removable battery — sure to please business users — but representatives didn't want us to take many photos underneath there. We should have more on the Q10 soon, so check back later.
Dante D'Orazio contributed to this report.
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