Blackberry Q5 announced for emerging markets

Blackberry has pulled back the curtain on its Q5 smartphone, the first BB10-powered device designed for emerging markets. Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins used his keynote speech at the BBLive conference in Florida to reveal the device, which has a 3.1in touchscreen display sat above Blackberry’s traditional physiical QWERTY keyboard.

Little else was revealed about the handset during the keynote, but as BBLive is a week-long event we’re sure more details will be following soon.

Due to launch in red, white, black and pink colour options, the Blackberry Q5 should be on sale in parts of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America by the summer – although we have yet to hear whether it will appear in the UK, or whether it will see a limited release in other markets.

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Heins also announced that the next version of the BB10 operating system, known as BB10.1, will launch in the coming weeks for the Z10 handset – it includes Skype video calling, support for PIN-to-PIN messaging within BlackBerry hub, HDR photograph and generally improved performance. We don’t know whether individual networks will need to certify the update, which could delay proceedings, but a Blackberry blog post says the software will begin to push to users today.

If you own a Z10, you should receive an alert notifying you when the update is available, or you can manually check in system settings.