BlackBerry’s first Android phone is no longer an AT&T exclusive in the United States. The Blackberry Priv will be available for use with Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint starting January 26th.
The phone is also already available in the UK from Vodafone.
The BlackBerry Priv features a 5.4 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a 3,410 mAh battery.
But there are two real stand-out features for the phone: it has a slide-out physical keyboard, and it’s a BlackBerry device. While it ships with Android Lollipop software, there’s also integration with a number of BlackBerry apps and services including BlackBerry Messenger, Hub, and other security and communication tools.
The phone has received mixed reviews so far, but I get the feeling some reviewers would like the $700 phone a lot more if it cost a lot less. Now that most wireless carriers are moving away from subsidies, it seems unlikely that you’ll be able to save much money by picking up the phone from a wireless provider other than AT&T… but at least there’s now a pretty good chance you can use it on the network of your choice.