The new BlackBerry smartphone is here, and it’s a fine piece of work light, sleek, and thin, and featuring the classic pushbutton keyboard. It’s exactly the phone I needed two or three years ago. But today? Not so much.

I speak of the Q10, available from Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. for $199 with a two-year contract, or $99 down and $20 a month for two years from T-Mobile US Inc. A version for customers of Sprint Nextel Corp. should roll out later this year.

BlackBerry, of course, was once a leading smartphone brand, famed for its robust corporate-grade software and its excellent physical keyboard, the best ever fitted to a pocket-size device. But then came Apple Inc.’s iPhone, with its touchscreen “virtual” keyboard and huge library of software apps, followed by a horde of phones running Google Inc.’s Android software. Meanwhile, BlackBerry’s operating system became obsolete, an upgrade planned for early 2012 was delayed for over a year, and millions of customers abandoned the devices. From 20 percent of the global smartphone market in 2009, BlackBerry has plummeted to less than 3 percent, according to the market research firm IDC.

But 2013 is supposed to be different. The new operating system, BlackBerry 10, is finally here, having made its US debut a few months back on the keyboard-less, all-glass BlackBerry Z10.

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Read also:

BlackBerry Q10: Hardware QWERTY and long battery life have a place in mobile (ZDNet)

BlackBerry shares fall as analyst downgrades stock ahead of earnings (Reuters)

BlackBerry Q10 Hits AT&T Stores Today (Geeky gadgets)

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