BlackBerry has finally launched its much awaited smartphone, BlackBerry Classic, which has a full QWERTY keypad. The company launched the phone at an event in New York. The BlackBerry classic comes with a 3.5-inch (720 x 720 pixels) touch screen display at 294 PPI pixel density. The phone is touted to be the largest ever on a BlackBerry QWERTY smartphone, it is even larger than the BlackBerry Q10, which was launched last year.
The Classic has a 35-key QWERTY physical backlit keyboard with wide layout and decently placed navigation keys. The device is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor coupled with a 2GB RAM. There is 16GB of internal storage onboard which can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card. The phone is backed by a 2515mAh battery which, as promised by BlackBerry, can deliver up to 22 hours of battery life.
The BlackBerry Classic sports an 8-megapixel auto focus rear camera with LED Flash and 1080p full video recording. It also has a 2-megapixel front facing camera with supports 720p HD video recording. It runs on 10.3.1 with updated icons and an instant action bar. The device comes pre-loaded BlackBerry World app store and Amazon Appstore for directly installing Android apps.
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BlackBerry Classic specifications
- 3.5-inch diagonal 294 PPI multi-touch display with Corning Gorilla Glass protection
- 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 (MSM 8960) processor with Adreno 225 GPU, 2GB RAM
- BlackBerry OS 10.3.1, 16GB internal storage, further expandable up to 128GB via microSD card
- 8MP Auto-Focus rear camera with 5-element f2.2 lens, BSI sensor, LED Flash 1080p HD video recording at 30fps
- 2MP Fixed-Focus front-facing camera with 720p HD video recording
- 131 x 72.4 x 10.2 mm, Weighs 178g
- 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 4.0 LE, SlimPort, NFC, GPS + GLONASS
- 2515mAh non-removable battery
The pre-order for BlackBerry Classic started last month at a price of S$449 / CA$499 / 349 GBP / 429 Euros in the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany, respectively. The shipment for the pre-order will start from next week.
BlackBerry said,”The Classic will be available starting today through local carriers around the world. It will also be available unlocked through BlackBerry and Amazon’s online stores. New orders will ship over the coming weeks since there is a huge demand.”said BlackBerry.
