BlackBerry Z10 is here: all-touch and with 70,000 BB10 apps behind it

BlackBerry's CEO (yep, it's all BB now, no RIM anymore) Thorsten Heins just took to the stage today to announce the BlackBerry Z10, its new powerhouse handset with the brand new BlackBerry 10 mobile OS.

The Z10 is a fully touchscreen device, unlike the nostalgic Q10, and it sports modern specs, too, with cool patterned soft-touch material on the back. The screen is 4.2" LCD with 1280 x 768 pixels, making for a pixel density of 356ppi. A 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and 2 GB of RAM are the power under the hood, and there are 16 GB of internal storage, as well as the all-important microSD card slot.

You will need all the RAM, because BB10 is a true multitasking system, like Android, so everything remains how you left it, or moves on under the hood, but is available at all times.

Cameramen will have an 8 MP rear main camera with LED flash at their disposal. It captures 1080 video, of course, and there is a 2 MP front-facer with HD capture. There is NFC, and wired connectivity includes microUSB and microHDMI ports. The Z10 is just 9 mm thick, so it won't feel chubby in your hands - all in all, a pretty decent package, and available in white, too.

It's the software that will count with BB fans, though, and a special attention has been given to the keyboard to make it as BlackBerry-esque as possible, and it indeed is a carbon copy of its physical counterparts. The added value is gesture typing with above-key choice of word suggestions and left swipe to delete word by word. 

There are at the moment over 70,000 applications for the phone, which is the most any mobile OS has had at launch, among which are Skype, WhatsApp, Angry Birds, SoundHound, Rdio, Where's My Water, Amazon Kindle and so on - over a thousand of the top applications have been committed to BB10 by now.

All major US carriers have plans to offer the BlackBerry Z10, with availability with them expected to be sometime around March, though exact availability dates have not been announced. Canada will get the Z10 on February 5 for CAD 139.99 with the typical 3-year contract available north of the border. In the UK, it will be launched as soon as tomorrow with major carriers. 

The Z10 will be available there as fully subsidized or pay-as-you-go handsets, and in the US carriers will announce pricing at a later date. 

Oh, and the new Global Creative Director for BlackBerry now - Alicia Keys.