BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) continues to try to claw its way back into the smartphone scene, first with the square Passport handset and next with one that goes back to its roots. The BlackBerry Classic will feature a QWERTY keyboard, and now other specs have supposedly been leaked.
The latest BlackBerry Classic leaked specs
Earlier this week, some alleged photos of the handset were leaked as well. If they are to be trusted, the new BlackBerry Classic will indeed address loyalists who stuck with the company’s phones because they like the physical keyboard.
The handset will supposedly feature a 3.5-inch display and run on a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor. It is expected to feature 2 GB of RAM and possibly go on sale in November.
But perhaps the most interesting and newest rumor of them all deals with the camera. The BlackBerry Classic could actually sport a 13-megapixel camera.
BlackBerry said to be testing 13-megapixel camera
The camera rumor comes from Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo. The post claims that BlackBerry is testing a 13-megapixel camera to see whether it can record 4K quality videos. But while 13 megapixels sounds pretty good right now, the real question is whether it will be able to perform on par with the cameras on other smartphones that are on the market. A high megapixel count is only as good as the camera’s overall performance.
One leak that hasn’t made its way out to the public yet is how much BlackBerry will charge for the new Classic. If the price is right, it could be at least a small success. But will it be enough to bring former BlackBerry users back into the fold?
BlackBerry tries to crawl back
The company has been battling declining market share for years, and many have written the company off as being essentially dead with no hope. But when CEO John Chen took over, he vowed to take the Canadian smartphone maker back to its roots and target enterprise users.
One thing that could really help sales of its smartphones is BlackBerry’s acquisition of Movirtu, which makes a new type of SIM technology that enables users to have two different phone numbers on one smartphone. In other words, they could have a business number and a personal number in their BlackBerry, thus eliminating the need to carry two different phones.
It may also enable enterprises to more easily pay for their employees’ work-related smartphone needs without also shouldering the burden of their personal phone needs as well.
