Blackberry CEO John Chen has just penned an open letter to existing and former users touting the abilities of the new Blackberry Classic. This phone reminds many of the Bold, which was the quintessential business device of its time.
The Blackberry Classic, otherwise known as the Q20, will come with a complete top row of navigation keys and a trackpad. Those are features that many BlackBerry fans missed when the company rolled out its revamped BlackBerry 10 line of devices last year.
The device is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB internal memory size. There is also a microSD card slot that allows memory expansion of up to 128 GB. It is also reportedly sporting a 13-megapixel primary camera with a 2-megapixel secondary camera for video calls. The Amazon App Store is bundled on the phone as well, to provide not only a wellspring of apps, but also video and music.
Chen conceded in a blog post that the company has made some mistakes in the last few years saying: “It’s tempting in a rapidly changing, rapidly growing mobile market to change for the sake of change – to mimic what’s trendy and match the industry-standard, kitchen-sink approach of trying to be all things to all people. When we lose sight of what you want and you need, we lose you.”
In my opinion, the Classic will sell. It hearkens back to the days of when Blackberry meant something to the business world. The physical keyboard still has a place in the world for people who don’t like touchscreens. Being a former Blackberry user myself, I have noticed that when I respond to text messages on an iPhone, I usually speak in Ebonics. My thoughts were more cohesively laid out when using a Blackberry.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.