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Tuesday, 3 March 2015

BlackBerry Announces Leap Phone, Moving Back Toward Touch Screens

After returning in force to its keyboard roots last year, BlackBerry jumped back into touch-screen phones this week at the Mobile World Congress here, announcing the five-inch BlackBerry Leap.
At its news conference here, the company also teased — in the briefest of fashions — that a curved phone with a slider keyboard might be “coming later this year.”
BlackBerry dual curve slider teased. Only on show for 5 seconds. “Coming later this year…”
As for the Leap, BlackBerry said it would go the distance for business users, with a 25-hour battery life, although it is no flagship device. The Leap will retail for $275 when it goes on sale in Europe in April. There is no word on whether it will be sold in the United States.
Its specifications are appropriately middle of the road: a high but not extremely high-definition screen, an eight megapixel rear-facing camera and a two megapixel front-facing camera, acceptable processor and memory specs, and a slightly heavy weight compared with some of the competition.
John S. Chen, the BlackBerry chief executive, focused much of his presentation on BlackBerry’s shift from a pure device maker to a company that can power business services on a variety of devices.
BlackBerries now run Android apps, and Mr. Chen emphasized a relationship with Samsung and its Knox division, which has created a business-oriented environment that can hold work-related apps and keep them separate from other data on a device.
In addition to the Leap, BlackBerry said it would introduce another phone this year that features a keyboard, as well as a followup to the high-end Porsche edition BlackBerry, which it released last year.
Analysts said that even as the company moved toward becoming more of a services company, it was still valuable to release new phones.
“Devices still represent a very significant revenue stream,” said Ben Wood, a mobile and wireless industry analyst with CCS Insight. “They can’t afford to slow down on their device portfolio releases. And to have a proper portfolio of devices, you have to have a touch screen.”
 From nytimes

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