BlackBerry Classic QWERTY Phone India Launch Expected at January 15 Event

Unfortunately, the official invite from the company does not reveal much about the QWERTY handset's price or availability. The official BlackBerry invite says, "Join us to witness the unveiling of the new BlackBerry 10" accompanied by a tagline, "Serious mobility for serious business," one that has been used for the company's revamped product line including the BlackBerry Passport and Classic smartphones in the past.

The Canadian company only last month launched the BlackBerry Classic smartphone; though it had revealed the pricing back in November to be $499 (roughly Rs. 30,800).

The BlackBerry Classic QWERTY smartphone features a 3.5-inch display with a screen resolution of 720x720 pixels. It offers a pixel density of 294ppi. The smartphone is powered by a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus (MSM8960) processor alongside 2GB of RAM. It comes with 16GB built-in storage, which is further expandable via microSD card (up to 128GB).

Powered by BlackBerry OS 10.3, the Classic sports an 8-megapixel auto-focus rear camera with backside illumination (BIS) and LED flash. It can record 1080p videos at 30fps. There is also a 2-megapixel fixed-focus camera that can record 720p videos. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, 4G LTE, GPRS/ EDGE, GPS/ A-GPS, Glonass, Bluetooth, and NFC. It packs accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, proximity, ambient light, and hall sensors.

The BlackBerry Classic packs a 2515mAh battery that is rated to deliver up to 17.2 hours of talk time and up to 15.2 days of standby time.

Much like other BlackBerry 10 OS smartphones, the BlackBerry Classic comes preloaded with BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Assistant, Dropbox, Adobe Reader, Evernote, BlackBerry Blend, BBM, BlackBerry World, Amazon Appstore, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and YouTube.