BlackBerry Q10 promised in March by Carphone, taken down

For a minute there it looked as if the BlackBerry Q10 was about to join the BlackBerry Z10 in UK shops, as the price of the Z10 already starts to fall.

As spotted by the Inquirer, dog-and-bone retailer Carphone Warehouse listed the Q10 with a March release date -- but that's now changed to 'coming soon'.

BlackBerry says the UK release is in April, so it looks like someone at Carphone Warehouse jumped the gun.

The Q10 is the second phone to show off the latest BlackBerry 10 software after the Z10. Unlike the all-touchscreen Z10, the Q10 sports a signature BlackBerry Qwerty keyboard under its smaller 3.1-inch touchscreen. It's a 4G phone, but it's yet to be confirmed which networks will offer the Q10 and whether it'll do 4G yet.

Despite the different designs of the Q10 and Z10, BlackBerry promises BB10 will not have the problem of fragmentation faced by Android. The vast wealth of Android phones of different shapes, sizes and power levels makes it hard to build apps consistently, or update phones at the same time.

The price of the Z10 has already started creeping downwards even barely a month after going on sale, and well before its US launch. 

Meanwhile, older BlackBerry phones are still kicking about, and it was announced today that phones with BlackBerry 5 software are being updated to BlackBerry Messenger 7, complete with VoIP voice chat. 

Are you considering a Q10? Are you planning to give BlackBerry 10 a shot, or are Android and iOS the only options nowadays? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.

Update: Added details from BlackBerry and amended intro.