Pre-orders for the unlocked BlackBerry Priv opened in October, but in the US, AT&T was the exclusive carrier for the device at launch, and it wasn"t until January that it was joined by T-Mobile. In March - four months after saying that the high-end Android handset was "coming soon" to its network - Verizon finally began selling the device too, but over a month later, there"s still been no sign of its arrival on Sprint.
As GSM Arena notes, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in January that the Priv would be offered on all four of America"s major carriers. And as recently as Friday, Sprint was continuing to tell its customers that the Priv would soon be joining its product range:
However, it seems that Sprint has in fact binned its plans to sell the BlackBerry handset. Despite months of commitments to the Priv, Sprint now says that it won"t be offering the device after all:
Several customers on Sprint"s support site report that in recent days, they were given contradictory information about whether the Priv would be available on the carrier, but it appears that after months of waiting, they finally have a definitive answer - although for some, it"s clearly not the answer they were hoping for.
BlackBerry announced a permanent price cut last week for the Priv in several key markets, including the US. The device is still shipping with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop onboard, and an Android 6.0 Marshmallow beta program for the device - due to launch this week - isn"t expected to be completed until mid-June.
Source: @SprintCare via GSM Arena