BlackBerry is not giving up on smartphone bandwagon as yet. It is making a return to its roots with the highly anticipated smartphone, the ‘Q20’ Classic, which was originally announced at the MWC (Mobile World Congress) 2014, along with Passport.
While addressing lately at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Hong Kong, the company's CEO John Chen, disclosed the launch timeline for the Classic smartphone, though he didn’t mention an exact date for that.
Chen said, “ES12 will launch on November 13th, followed by the BlackBerry Classic one month later.” He also published an open letter for the loyal users, in which, he said, "It’s tempting in a rapidly changing, rapidly growing mobile market to change for the sake of change – to mimic what’s trendy and match the industry-standard, kitchen-sink approach of trying to be all things to all people. But there’s also something to be said for the classic adage, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 or BES12, which was originally announced in February, as a dedicated device for business and government consumers for managing mobile phones on their networks. It is also seen as an attempt by BlackBerry to unite its prevailing platforms and provide users with enhanced flexibility and safety.
Interestingly, the BlackBerry Q20 Classic smartphone was reasserted for the 2014 launch by John Chen at the international launch of the Passport.
Bringing back the physical navigation keys, some of the anticipated specifications include a 3.46-inch display with a resolution of 720x720 pixels, 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor coupled with 2GB of RAM. The internal storage is expected to be of 16GB further expandable up to 128GB via microSD card. It might sport an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-camera. The battery is expected to be of 1515mAh. It will run BlackBerry 10 OS.
Previously, this month, BlackBerry Q20 Classic was leaked in photos. Based on the leaked prototype images, it appears to have stereo speakers and external nano-SIM or microSD card slots. No information yet regarding the front/ back camera specifications and the HDMI port inclusion.
BlackBerry’s CEO, John S. Chen, recently published an open letter for the loyal BlackBerry users to create a buzz for the upcoming Classic. Chen said in the letter, “It’s tempting in a rapidly changing, rapidly growing mobile market to change for the sake of change – to mimic what’s trendy and match the industry-standard, kitchen-sink approach of trying to be all things to all people. But there’s also something to be said for the classic adage, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” This statement signaled their return to their original design philosophy.
