BlackBerry Classic (aka Q20) With QWERTY Keyboard And 10.3 OS To Be Released In December

After reinventing itself with the BlackBerry Passport, the company is ready to release BlackBerry Classic, also known as Q20. This handset made an appearance way back in February, alongside the BlackBerry Z3. According to earlier reports, the BlackBerry Classic will hit the store shelves in November, however, now the release date seems to have moved to December. Meanwhile, the Z3 went on sale in May and was well-received.

At the MIT Enterprise Forum held recently in Hong Kong, John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, said that BES12 (i.e. BlackBerry Enterprise Server 12) will be released on Nov. 13 and the Classic smartphone will go on sale a month later, according to Phone Arena. [Scroll down to listen to John's speech.]

The BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 is a tool for business and government clients to handle mobile devices on their secured networks. With BES12, BlackBerry is attempting to merge its existing platforms and this in turn will offer increased flexibility and security for the customers, says NDTV.

As far as the specification goes, the BlackBerry Classic will feature the company's standard physical QWERTY keyboard and a row of function keys. The keys include call, menu, trackpad, back and end buttons. The device will come with a 3.5-inch touchscreen display complemented by a screen resolution of 720 x 720 pixels, which translates to a pixel density of 291 ppi. This retro handset will be powered by a dual-core (Qualcomm Snapdragon S4) processor, clocked at 1.5 GHz. The Classic will be backed by a good 2 GB of RAM.

Moving on to the camera configuration, the handset will sport an 8 MP rear-facing camera unit with LED flash, in addition to a 2 MP secondary shooter for selfies. Holding all these together is a solid 2,515 mAh battery unit. Plus, the device will come equipped with 16 GB of in-built storage space and microSD card support for expansion up to a whopping 128 GB. This new handset will run on BlackBerry's latest OS v10.3.

Apart from the standard connectivity options, the phone will support NFC and 4G LTE. Although BlackBerry Classic is not a pricey phone, the company has not revealed the details yet. Interested readers can check out the full-length speech of John Chen here. [Source: YouTube/MIT Enterprise Forum Hong Kong]