BlackBerry’s boss really wants you to love its new Classic phone, hypes it in blog post

By Trevor Mogg October 30, 2014

blackberry classic touted by john chen as launch nears leak front — Image used with permission by copyright holder

BlackBerry boss John Chen took to the company’s official blog on Wednesday to sound off about its new Classic handset, a device it hopes will go toward helping to revive the firm’s fortunes.

With a traditional BlackBerry design, but with new tech and a bigger and better display, Chen is hoping the yet-to-launch phone will appeal to the many users who jumped ship – or who’re thinking of doing so – to iOS or Android.

In the 400-word post, BlackBerry’s boss said that while it’s tempting “to mimic what’s trendy and match the industry-standard, kitchen-sink approach of trying to be all things to all people….there’s also something to be said for the classic adage, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.'”

The BB10 phone, which Chen said this week will land in December, will be the company’s fourth smartphone launch of 2014, following in the footsteps of the Z3, the P’9983, and the Passport.

Besides coaxing back former users, Chen also hopes to boost revenue by getting current BlackBerry users with older devices to upgrade to the Classic, which is also known as the Q20: “We recognize that a lot of you continue to hold on to your Bold devices because they get the job done, day in day out – just like you,” Chen writes, adding, “We get it, and we’ve got you covered.”

Besides BlackBerry’s iconic physical QWERTY keyboard, the Classic also features a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a trackpad, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage expandable to 128GB, and an 8-megapixel camera with a 2-megapixel one on the front. The device is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and runs version 10.3 of BlackBerry’s latest mobile OS.

In his blog post, the man brought in to save BlackBerry (and who followed another one that didn’t) also reassured current and (any) new customers that the firm is “in it for the long haul,” with no intention of quitting the business that once made it Canada’s most valuable company.

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