Following last week’s international launch, BlackBerry has officially released the mid-range Leap BB10 smartphone through its own ShopBlackBerry storefront as well as Amazon in the US for $274.99.
The Leap follows in the footsteps of the Z10 and Z30 with a 5-inch, 720p HD display and the same Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz as the Classic and Q10. Other features include 4G LTE support, an 8-megapixel main camera with flash, 2-megapixel front camera, memory card slot, and a 2,800mAh sealed battery. The device runs BlackBerry 10.3.1 with full support for the Amazon Appstore for Android apps.
The lack of newer Qualcomm SoC’s is a strong indicator that BB lacks the development resources to adapt BlackBerry OS to newer silicon.
Speaking from experience there, I feel their pain… but it’s sad to see BlackBerry Leap debut with a CPU that launched almost three years ago.