Solavei is offering the BlackBerry Z10, unlocked, to customers in the United States -- for nearly a thousand dollars from its online retail partner, GSM Nation.
The company sells service under its own brand, piggybacking on T-Mobile's network. Its main selling point is that it offers cheap, unlimited service and the possibility of saving (or even earning) money by recruiting friends to the network.
A user can earn $20 a month for every three people recruited, called a "Trio." When a member has three Trios, the income is higher than the cost of a monthly plan, $49.
Solavei says that since September, it has gained 120,000 members and has paid more than $5 million in commissions since its launch.
The Z10 is being sold in the Middle East for around $700, AllThingsD reports, and is already being sold in the UK and Canada. To get a subsidized version stateside, Americans will have to wait until March, although Solavei has plans to start selling immediately.
The new smartphones, Z10 and Q10, are built on QNX's platform, which the company acquired in 2010. QNX is the maker of a highly regarded, industrial-strength operating system for use in cars and medical equipment, TIME says. Reviews on the new phone have been generally positive, especially with regard to the Hub, though several tech sites feared that BlackBerry is too far gone already to recover.
BlackBerry offers over 70,000 applications, though many of them are simply crude versions of some unpopular Android apps, Florence Ion at Ars Technica says in her review of the phone. The OS has some minor bugs, but its gestures and functionality are fairly solid.
Business and corporate users, who have always been the core of BlackBerry's base, will appreciate having several of their mail accounts, and all their social networks, consolidated in one place within easy reach. It seems overwhelming at first, but you can also sort through your inbox by service.
The company is still pretty clearly playing catch-up to iOS and Android, but in contrast to its reputation of the last few years for being an obsolete system limping through mediocrity (does anyone remember when BlackBerrys were cool?), BlackBerry may yet regain its place in the pantheon of mobile phones recently dominated by Apple and Samsung.
