AT&T; begins taking pre-orders for BlackBerry’s Z10 smartphone

AT&T; began taking pre-orders for BlackBerry’s touch-screen-only Z10 smartphone Tuesday, with a shipping date set for March 22.

The wireless carrier is pricing the phone at $199.99 with a two-year agreement.

The Z10 is the first smartphone to launch with BlackBerry’s overhauled operating system, BlackBerry 10.

At a launch event in January, the Canadian company formerly known as Research in Motion showed off the long-overdue operating system and two phones: the touch-screen-only Z10 and a traditional physical keyboard model called the Q10.

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BlackBerry 10 features include separate work and personal profiles, time-saving ways to multitask without closing applications, video chat with live screen-sharing and more than 70,000 available apps.

For users wary of a touch-screen-only device, BlackBerry says the touch-screen on the Z10 has more accurate auto-correct and predictive text, multi-language capabilities within the same email and use of flicks and swipes to quickly select or delete words.

The Z10 features a high-resolution 4.2-inch display and an 8-megapixel camera that records 1080p HD video. It will be the first BlackBerry smartphone to run on AT&T;’s 4G LTE network.

Although the operating system and the devices themselves have debuted to generally positive early reviews, some are wondering if it’s too little, too late for BlackBerry. The once-dominant smartphone maker has seen its market share plummet to just 6% in the U.S., far behind Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android platforms.

In the U.S., AT&T;, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint will all carry BlackBerry 10 devices.

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