BlackBerry has finally launched its new-old smartphone, the keyboard-bearing BlackBerry Classic.
The phone, which has been available on pre-order for a month, offers users a rather unique proposition these days: a physical keyboard. The company earned its stripes with devices bearing hardware QWERTY keyboards, and some might argue that BlackBerry’s business really began to slide when it ditched them to hop on the touchscreen trend.
See also: BlackBerry Goes Back To The Future With Its “BlackBerry Classic”
The Classic offers both—a keyboard and a touch-enabled display that’s actually larger than the one featured in its last hit, the Bold 9900. Along for the ride are the familiar physical navigation keys and trackpad. Altogether, the phone should provide plenty of nostalgia for old-time BlackBerry lovers.
Whether that’s enough to make it the hit the company so badly needs is another question.
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There’s no strange keyboard layout, like the weird one with three rows of keys in BlackBerry’s Passport. The Classic’s keys, touchscreen and shortcuts were designed to let users fly through their communications “triage,” so they can select blocks of emails or zip through texts with lightning replies, even without looking at the keys.
Like previous BlackBerrys, those buttons have tactile contours and plenty of responsive spring when pressed, which should please touch typists. Folks who treasure the ability to manage their device with one hand should note that this phone is also much smaller than the Passport, and was designed for one-handed use—more like the old Bold 9900 from 2011.
The Classic’s other hardware specifications seem to come from that era too. The device features a dual-core Qualcomm processor, 2GB of RAM, a 1230 mAh battery and a 3.5-inch touchscreen (at 720 x 720 pixels, 294 dpi HD resolution).
BlackBerry, perhaps trying to get in front of any criticism of its compact screen, notes that the display is still 40% bigger than that of the Bold. Jeff Gadway, head of product and brand marketing, also pointed out that “when you bring up a keyboard on an iPhone and compare it with the Classic, the [Classic’s] display is within 4%.” Of course, he didn’t mention which of Apple’s super-sized iPhone he was referring to, though it’s all but certain he wasn’t talking about the monstrous iPhone 6 Plus.
As for battery life, — For more information read the original article here.
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