Canadian tech company BlackBerry has just launched its second smartphone that does not have a physical keyboard during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 in Barcelona, Spain.
BlackBerry Leap becomes the second smartphone in a little over a year that the company has done away with the physical keyboard, which has almost become synonymous with BlackBerry mobile devices.
In February last year, BlackBerry has also launched the BlackBerry Z3 that did away for the first time with the physical keyboard.
The BlackBerry Leap is a five-inch smartphone which is being positioned by the company to the younger market and which BlackBerry president of device Ron Louks refer to as the ‘career-builder’ handset, notes Mashable.
Louks announced that the latest smartphone offering from BlackBerry shall officially hit the market on April with a retail price of $275.
Key features
The BlackBerry Leap sports a 1280 x 720-pixel display resolution and shall boast of a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor and 2GB of RAM. It shall also have an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing snapper with a 16GB of storage that can be expanded up to 128GB using a microSD card.
The device is also an all-touch LTE device that will be running on the Blackberry 10 operating system.
One of the special advantages of the BlackBerry Leap over other smartphones today is its non-detachable 2,800mAH battery which is sufficient to power the handset for up to 25 hours of continued use.
The handset measures 144 x 72.8 millimeters and has a 9.5 millimeter thickness, which also makes it a bit on the slim side. It also weighs 170 grams, which is quite heavy for a device sporting a 5-inch screen.
The BlackBerry Leap shall also have encryption support as part of its security features along with malware protection and the built-in ability to back-up, wipe and restore the smartphone.
A mid-range handphone
Because of its price, the BlackBerry Leap is categorized in the mid-range market but the smartphone’s specifications are several notches below current and upcoming Android-based handsets, which make it a challenge to sell.
It is still not clear how the Canadian tech company intends to push to the market its latest smartphone offering.
Analysts also opine that even with new Leap, BlackBerry’s device portfolio is a bit wanting. The company recognizes that too so Ron Louks also teased a few more phones from BlackBerry that the company will be rolling out in the latter part of the year.
Including the BlackBerry Leap, the company intends to launch a total of five smartphones in 2015, which means that BlackBerry has four more in development as of this time. But what sparked interest among the audience was the slider phone which features a slide-out keyboard underneath the full-sized touchscreen which Louks teased at the MWC 2015 but has yet to name it.