BlackBerry Ltd
(NASDAQ:BBRY’s new Android-powered smartphone has just passed through the FCC and probably will officially be out in the next few weeks or months, according to Times News. The device we are talking about is dubbed the Hamburg. In May, the specs of BlackBerry’s new Android smartphone were leaked through a benchmark run. Last month, the same handset received its Wi-Fi certification.
BlackBerry Hamburg similar to Alcatel Idol 4
The FCC confirmed that TCL is making the Hamburg. The China-based company manufactures smartphones under the Alcatel brand. In addition, there have been rumors that the Chinese company has entered into a partnership with the Waterloo-based company earlier this year. It appears we are about to see the first handset of this partnership – a new BlackBerry-branded smartphone identical to the Alcatel Idol 4.
The Android-powered Hamburg will be a mid-range phone, and it is quite likely to be a re-branded version of the Alcatel Idol 4. The one leaked image showed a design similar to that of the Idol 4. Now the FCC reveals that the Hamburg has a 2,610 mAh battery, which is similar to the Idol 4’s battery.
The new handset has basically the same specs as the Idol 4 except for the chipset, according to an earlier GFXBench benchmark test. It was suggested by the GFXBench test that the Hamburg will run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 system-on-a-chip featuring an octa-core (8 cores) architecture with the CPUs clocked at 1.5 GHz. The chipset is slightly less powerful than that of Alcatel’s Idol 4 QSD 617 SoC, which is basically the same octa-core design but with the processors clocked at 1.7 GHz.
Expected specs for the Hamburg
BlackBerry’s new Android-powered smartphone should have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 chipset and a 5.2-inch 1080p touchscreen. The phone’s main camera is believed to be 13 megapixels, whereas the secondary /video-calling/selfie unit is expected to be 8 megapixels. As for storage, the handset will likely pack 16GB of built-in storage and 3GB of RAM. This new device will possibly run Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
According to the FCC manifesto, the device comes with Model number STH-100-2 / RJD211LW. The soon-to-be-released phone will be BlackBerry’s second Android-powered smartphone after the Priv. Unlike other handsets made by BlackBerry, there is no QWERTY keypad on the new handset. The BlackBerry Hamburg will actually be sold as the Neon, according to earlier rumors, and it might even become official next week.
Earlier this week, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that they will talk more about the handsets next week, so more information on the Hamburg could come then.
