Blackberry Classic with 3.5-inch HD Display, Full QWERTY keyboard Launched for $449

“The smartphone you trust, with the power you couldn’t imagine.” Blackberry chose today for a smartphone that has the stuff for yesterday. In an age where the big three (Android, iOS and Windows Phone) are booming with excellent devices, Blackberry chose the other way expecting buyers for the Blackberry Classic, which although isn’t going to be as smart as the competition, it will have all the functions that make it smart. And with the addition of a full QWERTY keyboard, Blackberry is offering a solution for users who wanted a physical keyboard, not limiting the device to touch use.

Talking of specs, the smartphone comes with a 3.5-inch square display with 720 x 720 pixels resolution, and below it is a full physical QWERTY keyboard. It is a physical backlit keyboard with 35 keys and these are larger and have bigger navigation keys for better usage. The Classic has a Dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor clocking at 1.5 GHz, along with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage, with the storage expansion possible to 128GB with MicroSD card.

The device has a 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and 1080p video recording, while on the front there is a 2-megapixel camera, which is capable of recording 720p videos. The OS running in the Blackberry Classic is the Blackberry 10.3.1 with the updated icons and the latest addition of features as well as the instant action bar. There is a 2515 mAh non-removable battery packed in, and according to the company, it will be enough to provide about 22 hours of regular usage.

Apart from the Blackberry Store for the apps, there is an Amazon appstore as well so that you can download apps from Amazon directly. The phone was available on pre-order and the pricing in U.S., Canada, UK, France/Germany respectively is US$449 / CA$499 / 349 GBP / 429 Euros.

Although the smartphone will be available locally through the carrier stores, Blackberry states that the availability will not be limited to that, and the unlocked Classic will be available on the Blackberry and Amazon online stores.