BlackBerry today officially took the wraps off its new BlackBerry Classic.
The BlackBerry Classic will obviously draw comparisons to the Bold, the Canadian OEM’s beloved enterprise productivity smartphone.
The Classic ditches the Bold’s curves, both in the housing and keyboard, in favor of straight-line design. The new device installs a 3.5-inch touchscreen display above an optical trackpad and the traditional navigational buttons like menu, back, start and end. The keyboard features a contoured key configuration similar to the Q10.
The Classic will run BlackBerry 10 and the company is promising the phone will have improved browsing as well as BlackBerry Hub, Assistant and Blend. The Classic also plans to deliver 22 hours of battery life. Less impressive is the 16GB of storage and 8-megapixel rear camera.
AT&T and Verizon have already committed to carrying the Classic next year. Pricing and release date details have yet to be surface. But the unlocked price for the device on BlackBerry’s website and Amazon is $449 and ships Dec. 31.
BlackBerry’s signature keyboard also factored heavily into the Passport, the company’s recently released square smartphone. Already available in black, white and red, BlackBerry CEO John Chen promised during a press conference Wednesday that “all kinds of variants of colors” are coming to the BlackBerry Passport.
Filed Under: Infrastructure