I do miss blackberry keyboards. $549, though, doesn't seem very competitive. Maybe that's just a list price, and actual pricing will be more in line with phones that have similar specs (other than the keyboard) ?
It's substantially lower in price, at $229.99
I'm no phone expert, but the premium for the keyboard plus a slightly larger battery seems off to me.
I don't know what exactly BlackBerry has committed to in terms of security updates, but if buy this phone and I get very timely security updates for the next 2+ years, that has a lot of value to me.
Competitive compared to what exactly? The way how I see it, the target market for this device will have two mandatory requirements:
1.) robust physical keypad; and 2.) modern Android OS
All other specs are secondary considerations. In the US, the only this I see this device competing against is BlackBerry's existing product line, in particular, the Priv.
The market of users who absolutely demand a smartphone with physical keypad is surely much smaller than the market of users who would like a physical keypad but are willing to settle for pure capacitive touch UI...which is undoubtedly still smaller than the market of users who couldn't care less. All I see here are market forces at work.
The Priv had a higher initial price, but it is now often on sale for $300.