BlackBerry 'Q20' Classic Qwerty Smartphone Confirmed for December Launch

While speaking recently at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Hong Kong, the company's Chief Executive John Chen revealed the launch time frame for the Classic smartphone without revealing an exact date or pricing.

Chen said (see in the video below) via N4BB, "BES12 will launch on November 13th, followed by the BlackBerry Classic one month later."

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 or BES12, originally introduced in February, was announced as a tool for business and government customers to manage mobile devices on their networks, and is also the company's attempt to unify its existing platforms and provide clients with increased flexibility and security.

Notably, the BlackBerry 'Q20' Classic smartphone was reconfirmed for a 2014 launch by John Chen at the global launch of the Passport smartphone.

Some of the expected specifications of the BlackBerry Classic smartphone include a 3.46-inch display with a resolution of 720x720 pixels; a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus CPU; 2GB of RAM; 16GB of inbuilt storage; expandable storage via microSD card (up to 128GB); an 8-megapixel rear camera; a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 1515mAh battery.

Earlier this month, the BlackBerry 'Q20' Classic was leaked in images flaunting its curved edges, keypads, back panel, screen and more. The BlackBerry Classic handset was seen to sport a lock button and two volume buttons on the right-side bezel, while featuring ports for the SIM card and microSD card on the left side. Two speakers were seen at the bottom, along with a charging port placed in the middle.