BlackBerry Q10 'Best Selling Smartphone Ever,' Says UK Retailer
A popular U.K. retailer known as Selfridge & Co. recently stated that the new BlackBerry Q10 might be its "best selling smartphone ever."
The device reportedly sold 2,000 units in the first 90 minutes, according to blogger Michael Collins who witnessed this phenomenon firsthand while visiting the Selfridge's Car Phone Warehouse.
"They were bringing phones up in baskets, hundreds at a time," wrote Collins in an April 26 blog post. "At 3 p.m., without phones left, they still had lines in the multi-buyer section and individual buyers'section. People were just trying to secure stock for tomorrow."
The store manager was even asked about the Q10's sales in comparison to the Z10. She said it was "leagues beyond anything they had seen."
The BlackBerry Q10 has received mixed to positive reviews in the U.S. thus far, however.
USA Today's Ed Baig recently reviewed the BlackBerry Q10. He feels that lovers of past models will take to this new version thanks to its full physical QWERTY keyboard.
"The company formerly known as Research in Motion once owned the physical keyboard smartphone market and still does," wrote Baig. "How big a market that remains is in question, but the Q10 is a winner for BlackBerry aficionados keen on thumb typing."
Other publications such as Mashable hold that same sentiment regarding the handset.
"So the Q10 scores a victory, but it's a pyrrhic one. As good as many of the features of the Q10 are, it's not a phone I could recommend to anyone but the diehard few who were already lining up for it," said the publications Pete Pachal.
The Q10 features decent specifications including a 3.1-inch display with 720 x 720 pixel resolution, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The major difference between the Z10 and the new version is the addition and the physical QWERTY keyboard.