Despite the weak sales of its Q10 and Z10 smartphones, Canadian tech firm BlackBerry is joining the gold club by releasing gold and white special editions of its Q10. The unit will be available in the United Arab Emirates in late August for $1,035.

BlackBerry said that so far only 24 pieces of the gold model have been released and could be found at the BlackBerry standalone boutique in Dubai Mall. The price incudes a gold-accented headset and protective leather sleeve that has a unique range of distinctive BlackBerry PIN numbers.

Source: Phonearena.com

In releasing the gold unit, BlackBerry joins Samsung which recently unboxed the gold-toned touchscreen flip phone, also limited to certain markets, and Apple which would release a champagne gold colour model for the iPhone 5S.

For ordinary people who are still fans of BlackBerry, the phone company's first 4G LTE BlackBerry 10 smartphone from Sprint will be available on Friday, Aug 30, through direct ship sales channels such as Sprint Stores, Business Sales, Web Sales and Telesales at $199.99. It comes with a two-year service agreement.

David Owens, vice president of Sprint for Business Development, said their customers have been waiting for the Q10 because of its physical keyboard, productivity features, enhanced security capabilities and apps.

The Q10 uses a 1.5GHz dual-core processors, 2GB RAM, 16GB memory and microSD memory card slot that supports up to 32GB memory cards. The screen is a 3.1-inch Super AMOLED display that features capacitative multitouch navigation and four-row, full QWERTY keyboard.