We had been anxiously waiting for this moment because since a year Blackberry CEO, John Chen, has been teasing the phone and the company has finally made official the BlackBerry Classic in its latest announcement. As we can all guess from the name, the look of the phone has a throwback element to it because of the full QWERTY physical keyboard and the physical navigation keys. And the overall design of the smartphone looks so close to the BlackBerry smartphones which were introduced years ago such as the Bold.
As compared to the more luxurious BlackBerry Passport which was launched earlier this year, the Classic smaller and can easily fit inside the hand so you don’t have to worry about compromising on one-hand use. The company has stated that this phone is targeted towards those who are looking for the contemporary and ultimate BlackBerry experience and had missed it in the recent phones.
Specifications
The BlackBerry Classic sports a square, 720 x 720 pixel, 3.5-inch touchscreen which has been conveniently placed right above the keyboard and navigation keys and as you can see it is considerably smaller than the 4.5-inch screen on the Passport. This is also smaller than the touchscreen featured on the average smartphones but this feature allows the phone to be used with just one hand along with the physical QWERTY keyboard.
A dual-core Qualcomm processor from 2012 powers the phone and there is 2 GB RAM inside. This is not something ideal for mobile gaming and videos but it will perfectly perform the job of going through dozens of emails a day and this is exactly what the users of the Classic would expect from it. The camera setup however is quite impressive with an 8 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front shooter.
The phone runs the latest BlackBerry 10 OS and this means the users of Classic will be able to enjoy all productivity tools such as Hub, Assistant, and Blend and the most attractive feature is that it can also run Android apps which can be accessed through the Amazon Appstore. Moreover, the popular BrickBreaker game is also available on the phone.
The BlackBerry Classic hasn’t been targeted towards the normal smartphone loving people. It is purely for those who love the BlackBerry experience and had been looking for a latest but a more traditional design for their convenience. The phone is now available for purchase through all carriers around the world and AT&T and Verizon have announced that they will sell the phone in 2015. You can also purchase the unlocked version from BlackBerry and Amazon’s online stores for $449.