After the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 were made officially official in January, the four major U.S. carriers began making announcements about their plans to carry the new hardware. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon all committed to launching the full-touch Z10 model, but Sprint was noticeably absent, only saying that it planned to offer the QWERTY-packin' Q10. Now Sprint has opened up on the matter, with spokesman Mark Elliott confirming to Bloomberg Businessweek that the Z10 won't be coming to the Now Network. "We aren’t saying there’s anything different about our customers. We think our customers will be happy with the qwerty keyboard and touch screen on the Q10," Elliot explained.
While this news isn't totally surprising given Sprint's silence concerning the BlackBerry Z10, it's still a bummer for the No. 3 U.S. operator's customers. The BlackBerry Z10 will start hitting U.S. carriers this month, but the Q10 isn't expected until April at the earliest, with BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins recently hinting that we may not see it in the U.S. until May or June. That means that Sprint users will be waiting quite a bit longer for their first taste of BlackBerry 10 than the subscribers of the other big U.S. operators. At least Sprint customers know that they'll be getting a BlackBerry 10 device at some point, though, and the extra wait time means that the BlackBerry World app storefront ought to be a bit more filled out by the time that the Now Network gets in there. What do you Sprint folk make of this news? Are you happy with the Q10 or would you prefer the Z10?
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