BlackBerry has announced that its new Q5 smartphone is expected to be locally available from authorized carriers and retailers from the start of July.

Vodacom has already confirmed that the BlackBerry Q5 is available at Vodacom World, the Vodacom online store as well as at participating outlets. The contract price of the device is R289 per month on a 24-month Smart Small plan that includes unlimited BBM messaging. Prepaid users can buy the smartphone for a recommended retail price of R5 000.

Like the Q10, the Q5 (120 x 66 x 10.8 mm; 120 g) sports a physical QWERTY keyboard that is paired with a 3.1" (720 x 720 pixels; 328 ppi pixel density) LCD, as opposed to the 3.1" (720 x 720; 328 ppi) Super AMOLED of the Q10. This smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core CPU running at 1.2 GHz per core and features a non-removable 2180 mAh Li-Ion battery.

As with its BlackBerry 10 stablemates, the Q5 boasts 2 GB of RAM and runs the latest version of the Canadian company’s mobile platform, namely BlackBerry 10.1. This updated OS version adds a few new software features such as an HDR (high dynamic range) shooting mode for the camera, landscape support for the calendar, as well as enhanced red eye reduction functionality within the photo editor.

Users have access to 8 GB worth of internal storage, but are able to expand upon this via microSD card slot, with the slot supporting cards up to 32 GB in size. The Q5 sports a 5 MP rear-facing camera instead of the 8 MP unit utilised on the Z10 and Q10, but the smartphone retains the same 2 MP front-facing snapper found on the Q10.

In other smartphone related news, Sony Mobile Communications recently took on Samsung in the large screen smartphone arena, courtesy of its newly announced Xperia Z Ultra. Read our first impressions of the device here.