14 DAY TRIAL // The last BlackBerry smartphone to make its way into the market this year is the Q20 or the so-called BlackBerry Classic. The device was confirmed by the company’s CEO John Chen during the BlackBerry Passport’s official unveil last month.
Although Chen did not share details on the BlackBerry Classic exact release date, rumor has it that the smartphone should make its debut on the market sometime in November.
The rumor was based on John Chen’s comments on the Classic launch from after the Passport’s release on the market, which is one of the reasons we thought it would be accurate enough.
Well, it looks like these rumors have just been put to rest by the same John Chen who said, while speaking at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Hong Kong, that the BlackBerry Classic would be launched in December in fact.
According to N4BB, Chen confirmed that BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 (BES 12) will be released on November 13, while the BlackBerry Classic smartphone will be launched “one month later.”
John Chen’s statement can be heard in the video below at the 1:05:54 mark, and to make things even more accurate, the information comes in line with BlackBerry’s leaked roadmap for 2014.
This means that BlackBerry fans anxiously waiting for the Classic to hit shelves should expect to be able to get it in mid-December or around that timeframe.
The good news is BlackBerry Classic will arrive just in time for the holiday season, so the Canadian company may take advantage of this important time of the year when products sales tend to skyrocket compared the rest of the year.
The sequel to BlackBerry Q10 promises slightly better specs
Also known as Q20, the upcoming smartphone is BlackBerry’s attempt to go back to its roots in terms of design. The Canadian company is trying to offer fans that are still attached to the classic BlackBerry design an alternative.
BlackBerry Classic is expected to sport a 3.46-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports 720 x 720 pixels resolution. The smartphone will come with a full QWERTY keyboard and a range of connectivity options such as LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0, NFC (Near Field Communication) and GPS.
Hardware-wise, the Classic will be equipped with a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card slot.
The smartphone would ship with BlackBerry 10.3 OS and should be powered by a high-capacity 2515 mAh battery, which hasn’t been rated by the manufacturer yet.
