BlackBerry Priv will cost £580 in UK

BlackBerry’s Priv handset is arriving sooner than we thought, and in fact pre-orders are now live with Carphone Warehouse.

And as expected, the company’s new smartphone, which runs Android rather than BlackBerry OS, is priced at the premium end of the spectrum. The SIM-free version will set you back £580, and is available in just the one color -- black.

If you reserve your device now, you should receive it by November 6, or at least that’s the date Carphone Warehouse is aiming for.

If you’re looking for a pay monthly deal, then at Carphone Warehouse tariffs start from £32.50 per month (although you’ll have to pay £80 upfront for the phone itself with that plan).

That’s with O2 and it gets you unlimited minutes and texts plus 1GB of 4G data.

Vodafone offers a very similar deal, except it charges £34 per month and for that extra bit of money doubles the data allowance to 2GB of 4G data. Or you can get 6GB of data with Vodafone for £39 per month and a £60 upfront fee.

If you want the handset free, the cheapest plan is £49 per month which comes with 2GB of 4G data, although that works out very poorly overall compared to the 6GB plan we just mentioned (you’re only saving £60 on the handset anyway, and paying out £10 a month extra, which will be £240 over the whole contract -- plus you’re only getting a third of the data allowance as well).

Previous speculation had pegged the device with a 2016 release. The Priv offers a 5.4in Quad HD display which slides up to reveal a full keyboard, and brings a world of privacy and security to Android which BlackBerry hopes will further differentiate it from all the other massed ranks of handsets sporting Google’s OS.

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