Verizon has quietly announced launch details for its version of the BlackBerry Classic smartphone. The phone will be launched on February 26 online and in Verizon Wireless stores on March 5 for $149.99 with new two-year agreement and $50 mail-in rebate debit card (takes up to six weeks and expires in 12 months), bringing the total to $99.99 after. Verizon Edge pricing is also available for eligible customers, however Verizon has not determined monthly installment pricing for the phone.
The phone will feature the latest version of the BB10 OS as well as support for Verizon’s AWS LTE overlay, marketed as XLTE. The phone features a slightly larger 3.5-inch display with a 1:1 aspect ratio and the same 720 by 720 pixel resolution as found in the Q10. BlackBerry brought back the “toolbelt” on the Classic for more familiar device controls in the optical trackpad, and capacitive send/end and back/menu keys. The phone has a 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video capture and a 2-megaixel user-facing camera.
The phone features an updated 1.5GHz Qualcomm S4 processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage with support for microSD cards up to 128GB. As stated earlier, the phone runs BlackBerry OS 10.3.1, which features the BlackBerry Hub and the updated Android runtime for full support with the Amazon Android App Store. The BlackBerry Classic also features 22 hours of battery life. Further features include dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio, NFC, and full support for GPS and other geo-location services.
