Camera-less BlackBerry Q10 is technically possible, says company executive

By Sameer Mitha

BlackBerry says that a camera-less version of its Q10 smartphone is technically possible but its existence will depend on demand from carriers.

There are a large number of organizations around the world where smartphones that house a camera aren’t allowed. Government organizations, research houses and other places of high importance don’t permit gadgets with cameras in their premises for security reasons. Keeping this approach in mind, BlackBerry in the past has made several versions of its smartphones available without a camera.

With the launch of the flagship Z10 and the Q10, we thought one of the two would see a camera-less version for the above said purpose. During a media briefing BlackBerry Singapore's country director, Charles Dufourcq said that a camera-less version of the Q10 is technically possible, but the existence of this device would depend on the demand received by carriers. Removing the camera module isn’t a difficult task. The problem is that a new manufacturing line would be required to produce these smartphones. What remains to be seen is whether the demand for these camera-less BlackBerry devices is high enough to justify their production.

Put simply, the BlackBerry Q10 is an evolved version of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and is meant for those business users that still enjoy the comfort of a physical QWERTY keypad over a touchscreen.

The Z10 is BlackBerry’s flagship smartphone and has a really good yet simple build. The camera is good, display is great and it has the familiar yet modern feel thanks to the BB10 OS. On the down side the OS is still a bit buggy, email sync isn’t the easiest and Google contact sync tends to create duplicate contacts.

thinkdigit.com