This year, the highly anticipated follow-up device to the classic BlackBerry Bold has now been made available as pre-orders for the BlackBerry Classic have already begun.
Rogers has already started taking pre-orders for the device, only days after BlackBerry began pre-orders in the United States and the United Kingdom. Pre-orders for Canada, however, have not yet been confirmed.
Looking into the BlackBerry page for the Classic will let users identify the main advantages of the upcoming device, including speedy web browsing, long battery life, premium build and integration of a physical keyboard onto the square touchscreen.
Sporting a QWERTY keyboard, the handset comes with a price tag of $449 without a contract and shipping start in the middle of December. The first shipping date is reportedly on December 17.
BlackBerry released an official statement with regards to the upcoming device, saying: "Our loyal customers asked us for a very specific phone and we answered with BlackBerry Classic: a familiar design inclusive of the beloved classic navigation keys and physical keyboard, with the speed and powerful performance of BlackBerry 10."
Similar to the BlackBerry Passport, the BlackBerry Classic runs the BlackBerry 10.3.1 OS for users to get their hands on apps from the BlackBerry World app store.
It sports a 3.5-inch touchscreen with 720 x 720 resolution, 8-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front snapper, 2GB of RAM and internal storage with16GB. The handset also comes with a microSD slot.
Powered by the Qualcomm S4 Plus chip, the upcoming device still features the conventional physical keyboard, buttons for taking and ending calls, and the traditional BlackBerry key.
Aside from having Blend and other BlackBerry services, the BlackBerry Classic is capable of obtaining and running Android apps from the Amazon App store but not from the Google Play store.
While the BlackBerry Classic supports 4G, it can run on specific LTE bands only. Unfortunately, it does not work with CDMA networks such as Sprint and Verizon.
