BlackBerry Priv officially available for pre-order in the US, Canada and UK

Blackberry's first Android smartphone, the Priv, is now available for pre-order in the U.S, Canada and U.K. 

In the U.S, the BlackBerry Priv is available for $699 via BlackBerry Store , in Canada the cost is $899 and in UK for £559. BlackBerry says that the Priv will be shipped starting November 6. The Priv is not a CDMA handset, so it will not work on Verizon, Sprint, and US Cellular, but it is compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile.

Optional accessories are also available for order including Stylus sync pods, Slimport to HDMI or VGA adapters, cases including pocket and holster style cases, flip covers and slide out shell style cases and more.

BlackBerry touts that the Priv is the "World's first BlackBerry Secure Smartphone Powered by Android". It comes pre-installed with DTEK by BlackBerry warning system app for privacy purpose. The app lets you know when your privacy could be at risk so you can take action to improve it. With the app you also get to know the overall security rating for your device and specific security features.

The Priv sports a four-row signature BlackBerry slider keyboard and has front-facing speakers and three microphones. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

As for the specs, the BlackBerry Priv features a 5.4-inch QHD (1440x2560 pixel) dual curved display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. It is equipped with Hexa-core Snapdragon 808 64-bit processor with Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB RAM. On-board storage is 32GB, further expandable via microSD card up to 1TB. 

For imaging, there is an 18-megapixel camera on the back with dual-tone flash, OIS, PDAF, f/2.2 aperture. It can record 4K videos and has 6DOF video stabilization. On the front there is a 2-megapixel shooter.

There is support for 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, GPS, MIMO, NFC and USB 2.0 connectivity. It is fueled by 3410mAh battery which offers up to 22.5 hours of battery life with mixed usage. There is also support for Qi wireless charging and Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0.