It may be rumoured that Blackberry is officially up for sale, but it’s not slowing the Canadian-based company down, with the announcement of the Blackberry 9720.
What’s odd about the Blackberry 9720 is that it doesn’t run on BB10 like the Q10 and Q5, but instead it’s running on an operating system that was first unveiled in 2011. It would be like Microsoft shipping a smartphone with Windows Mobile on-board.
The Blackberry 9720 comes in a variety of colours including black, blue, pink, purple and white and features a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 360. It will also feature something that has made Blackberry so successful in the past — a QWERTY keyboard.
After the Q5 came in at an extortionate price, it’s likely that the Blackberry 9720 is going to be the budget friendly device — although we can’t help but get past it’s old OS.
Of course if you can get past that, then you’ll see that it also has a pretty poor specs sheet, with 512MB of internal storage and a 5MP camera — it does come with an FM radio though.
Blackberry is hoping that this phone catches on with the BBM fanatics, with a dedicated BBM button on the device giving you instant access.
It is also hoping that its improvements to the Blackberry 7 OS are enough to make it a lot more touch-friendly than it was in yesteryear.
According to Carlo Chiarello, Executive Vice President for Products at Blackberry, the Blackberry 9720 is “perfect for customers upgrading from a feature phone or entry-level Android or Windows Phone device, as well as existing BlackBerry smartphone customers, that want a richer experience and jump up in style and performance.”
The Blackberry 9720 should be available in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, although we’re currently awaiting specific details from Blackberry.
