Formally known as RIM, the newly rebranded BlackBerry has officially announced its new flagship smartphone, the Z10. It has an iPhone 5-esque comfortable form factor measuring in at 0.35" in thickness compared to 0.30" thickness of the iPhone 5 - and a 4.2-inch full touchscreen (non-Gorilla Glass) display with the resolution of 1280x768 at 356ppi. Under the svelte aluminum, glass and plastic shell, the BlackBerry Z10 is home to 16GB of on-board storage with the option of expanding that capacity with an additional 32GB using a microSD card, an 8-megapixel backside illuminated rear camera which is capable of shooting full 1080p video, and 2-megapixel front facing camera capable of 720p HD recording.

white iPhone 5 and Z10 battle it out in style

Performance wise, the Z10 is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Plus processor with 2GB of RAM, and a removable 1800mAh battery. The Z10 is running BlackBerry's in-house operating system called BlackBerry 10 - and features all the modern bells and whistles like NFC, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi a/b/g/n, micro-HDMI, micro-USB and 3.5mm ports and LED notification light to name a few.

BlackBerry's $199 Z10 handset will be available in the USA on March in white and black flavors on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon with a 2-year contract. Sadly, the white variant is exclusive to Verizon while LTE data isn't supported on T-Mobile. Lucky UK residents can pick the Z10 starting today.

In addition to the hardware, BlackBerry has made a plethora of official BlackBerry 10 accessories to go along with the Z10 such as an ultra-portable Bluetooth 4.0 speaker, and a slew of NFC-friendly protective pouches and cases. Amongst those, notably is a $35 folio-style hard case called the Flip Shell with what looks like a Smart Cover-like cover that keeps the screen protected using a magnetic closure, while also folding into a video stand with two different angle levels.