BlackBerry Unveils Classic Smartphone

(RTTNews) - BlackBerry Ltd. (BBRY, BB.TO) on Wednesday unveiled the BlackBerry Classic, sporting its iconic QWERTY keyboard, familiar design and also a touch screen.

The struggling Canadian smartphone maker expects the Classic to woo back consumers with preference for a physical keyboard and help it regain the dominant market share which it lost to Apple's iPhone and devices running on Google's Android platform.

As the name suggests, the Classic sports the trademark BlackBerry design, and looks very similar to BlackBerry Bold and Curve models. Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry claimed its new phone has 60 percent more screen space, 50 percent more battery life and has access to higher number of applications through Blackberry World and Amazon.com Inc.'s (AMZN) Android Appstore.

BlackBerry Chief John Chen said, "BlackBerry Classic is the powerful communications tool that many BlackBerry Bold and Curve users have been waiting for. It's the secure device that feels familiar in their hands, with the added performance and agility they need to be competitive in today's busy world."

BlackBerry Classic features a 3.5-inch touch screen display with a 294 dpi HD resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.5 Ghz Qualcomm processor along with 2GB of RAM. The phone has internal storage of 16GB, which is expandable to 128GB by micro SD card. It sports a 2MP front and 8MP rear-facing camera.

The Classic runs on BlackBerry 10, which offers features like Blend, Assistant and Hub. BlackBerry 10 can also run Android apps that can be downloaded from Amazon Appstore.

BBRY is currently trading at $9.63, up $0.12 or 1.21%, on the Nasdaq.