[Tutac]

Hey everyone. I've been reading the crackberry site for some time now (about 4 months) since I heard about the new Q5 model which is coming soon, and stumbled upon this site on google.

For the last 2 years I've been an android user. Had a phone with 2.2 froyo OS on it. Put cyanogen mod with 2.3 gingerbread and the phone did what it supposed to over the years. Had a few dislikes here and there but hey, you get what you paid for right? I'm a third year student on an University, and study IT. Would like to get myself a new phone.

After hearing about the new Q5 and the whole BlackBerry oriented to youth mobile phone mumbo jumbo, I was really into it. The phone released today in Dubai as I read and that's good, but the price isn't. The thing is, from a technical standpoint, that this phone with the listed specifications is almost the same as the BB Q10 model which is supposed to be its "bigger better" brother. Well, the Q5 comes with dual core 1,2GHZ and 2 GB of RAM which is enormous compared to the amount of RAM available on android phones (mostly they have either 512 mb or 1 gb).

So my question would be, if it was really meant for the younger BB users, why in the world did they put the price so high? Do they really think that price stands as an affordable? I mean, they used a plastic casing to lower the costs, yet they put the strong hardware inside it, not to mention all the other bells and whistles which you can find on the link I gave above. I don't get it? I really want to, and think that it would be great to have something other than S. Galaxy's and iPhones which everybody has all over the place now. But frankly, I don't know if it will be in my budget/wallet price range when (and if) it hits my providers here. The Z10 and Q10 are available already and with a 2 year contract (extended, not a new one) and a monthly fee that suits my needs you can get a Q10 for say 650$ (when converted form my currency). That's a lot of money for a phone.

All that mentioned, I had high hopes for Q5 but I guess the price will be almost as high as the Q10 one (not exactly but close enough). I doubt that this is the phone for emerging markets because in places where providers are not subsiding or are subsiding poorly for mobile phones, BlackBerry just wont make it. I mean, I can get myself an iPhone 4 (8GB model) with the monthly plan that suits me, and the phone would cost me 190$ (when converted from my currency).

In the other hand, I do realize as mentioned above that BB Q5 has better specs than the old iPhone 4 and probably better lasting batteries and a lot of other things, but hell I just can't find an excuse to buy myself the Q5 if it comes here, because it's going to be affordable only for corporate/business users which have full payed jobs/are married/have kids already ( desparate humor here ).

Anyone have an comment/advice/anything that would beat my thesis ? Id like to get the Q5 but, there's a chance that may not be possible for me...

Any chit chat or talk would be greatly appreciated since I don't have any colleagues using BB's here.

[nhanken]

Hi Tutac may I ask what country are you from? I understand how you feel when it comes to prices. BlackBerry 10 is fairly new and I don't know what the heck BlackBerry is thinking; prices are also affected by carriers, tariffs etc....

I believe that in order to spread out the words about BlackBerry 10 devices, BlackBerry first needs to get their devices into the hands of as many people as they can at competitive prices. This way more developers will start to build apps for BlackBerry when they see a huge increase in BlackBerry 10 sales. THEN BlackBerry can charge a premium for their rumored A10 and other high end BlackBerry 10 devices that are coming later this year!

My only advice is that you should wait at least two months or so after the Q5 launch date - this way the prices will go down for sure by then. It's happened to the Z10 and it will be the same for the Q5. I guess BlackBerry thinks the early birds should pay more for premium worms?


Posted via CB10

[The Aficionado]

The exact price will depend on your country

But it looks like they are aiming for it to cost about 50% of what the q10 does, yet I must concur it is a bit too high still

Posted via CB10

[Tutac]

Hey, thanks for the reply. The country you asked? Croatia, I guess since its in eastern Europe, it should become available here after some time.

[papped]

A lot of the answers were already covered.
1 - Price varies based on region, currency, etc...
2 - Price will drop eventually anyways.
3 - Most of the components are the same as the Q10, it's not really much of a downgrade at all.
4 - Never, ever buy an unsubsidized device right near the launch if you are worried about price... That just doesn't make any sense to do at all.

[CarGuy1368]

They put in great hardware so that the phone will not lag or freeze very often. The previous Curve models were notorious for this which gave BlackBerry a very bad image. The specs they put in must have been the absolute minimum for BlackBerry 10 to run efficiently.

[RECOOL]

The phone is well priced really based on specs its on par with an iphone 5 almost.The difference being that iphone 5 has 8 mp and larger screen.The Q5 has 1gb ram extra and a keyboard.The 2 gig ram is much more benificial in the long run as it will be able to handle updates later and give your phone a longer life.

Someone posted that a company will be ordering a high amount of Q5 devices.This is after they evaluated the Z and q10 they just found them to be too expensive.The Q5 price fitted better with their budget. From that post I came to conclusion that BB is always priced high cause its a new device and that business will bulk order first.Eventually price will come down.

So in your case do not buy straight away the corporations will order first you need to wait a month or two later when the price drops.I cant gurantee the price will drop as each network and shop is different worldwide.In some parts of the world the price may never come down.

But as alwasy if you are not happy with the price just wait a month or two.Ifyou are still not happy then you will have to buy a different phone .New products do not get released at cheap they start high then decrease to lower price.

[Tutac]

I understand I'll have to wait for some time for the price to drop. But still I think it will be too high for my budget. I guess I'll have to skip on this one. Dunno, maybe some WP phone, like Lumia 520 or something.

Thanks for the reply

[RECOOL]

I understand I'll have to wait for some time for the price to drop. But still I think it will be too high for my budget. I guess I'll have to skip on this one. Dunno, maybe some WP phone, like Lumia 520 or something.

Thanks for the reply

I already have a Z10.I myself and my lil sister a first year uni student will be waiting for price drop on this.But you have to do whats best for you.I dont want to influence you so do your research and figure everything thing out.Good luck.