BlackBerry is trying hard to regain lost ground in the mobile market and the upcoming Q20 smartphone hopes to reel in customers with an old-school design. That being said, the company sees it wise to drop the branding and call the QWERTY-equipped handset the BlackBerry Classic instead.
The new moniker should sit well with fans and loyalists. What’s worth mentioning is that the BlackBerry Classic name has been used by the company, most notably its new CEO, multiple times in the past, but it hasn’t been considered as an official moniker. In a recent interview with N4BB, John Chen disclosed that BlackBerry will stick to the Classic branding. The smartphone is the first in the BB10 series to feature the traditional design with the trackpad and Menu, Back, Send as well as End buttons onboard.
These features were absent from the Q10 and Q5 smartphones. The BlackBerry Classic was launched at the MWC 2014 and the company’s press release announcing the phone has also been updated with the new branding. There isn’t much known about the handset apart from that it will have a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a premium design and a large battery. No hardware specifications have been revealed and we still don’t know what the device looks like.
In other news, BlackBerry CEO John Chen took to the company’s blog to clarify his latest comments about quitting the smartphone business if sales fail to pick up. The CEO notes that his comments ‘were taken out of context’ and that he isn’t considering ‘selling off or abandoning’ the company anytime soon. The main objective is to make the business profitable and the company will also invest in other solutions.
The BlackBerry Classic is expected to go on sale sometime during fall 2014.