BlackBerry Q10 launching via Vodafone on April 26th

U.K. carrier Vodafone has put up its pre-order page for the QWERTY equipped BlackBerry Q10. According to the carrier's site, the device will be shipped starting April 26th on a first-come first-served basis and will arrive at destinations starting April 30th. Vodafone has a number of plans where the phone is free including one that will cost you £37 per month ($46.44 USD) and brings you unlimited talk, unlimited text and 1GB of data each month.

If you don't mind reaching into your pocket to pay for some of the phone, Vodafone has another plan for just £33 per month ($50.34 USD) which gives the subscriber 500MB of data and requires the purchase of the phone at £130 ($198 USD). A Vodafone rep apparently said that it will be some time before the phone is offered unlocked and SIM free although Phones 4U has indicated that a SIM free version of the device will cost £550 ($839 USD).

There are many BlackBerry fans who are so used to a physical QWERTY keyboard like the one on the BlackBerry Q10. That led many to wonder why BlackBerry didn't release the Q10 first instead of the all-touch BlackBerry Z10. A few weeks ago, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said that the Z10 was harder to produce and it wanted to get that out of the way. Heins said that he also wanted to quickly counter the rise of touch devices like the Apple iPhone or Android models in BYOD offices globally. Late last month, the executive said that the BlackBerry Q10 would be available in the U.S. sometime in May.

source: Vodafone via CNET