Telstra has begun selling the Blackberry Classic, a new Blackberry phone with the vendor’s trademark physical qwerty keyboard.
Blackberry has launched several phones with physical keyboards in Australia in the last 12 months. However, unlike its previous square-shaped Passport, Blackberry is likening the Classic to its well-regarded Bold 9900 in appearance.
While Telstra is selling the Classic, a Blackberry spokesperson said other carriers could potentially sell the phone in the future. The Passport was launched in Australia with Optus.
The Blackberry Classic sells for $504 outright or on Telstra plans. Blackberry claims the new phone has a browser three times faster than the Bold 9900.
The Classic also has a 3.5 inch touchscreen, which the company says has 60 percent more screen space than the Bold 9900. Blackberry is also claiming 50 percent longer battery life than the Bold 9900, with up to 22 hours of battery power.
The phone also has a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU, 2GB RAM, 16GB of storage expandable to 128GB via uSD and a 2MP front camera and 8MP rear-facing camera. The phone runs BlackBerry 10 OS 10.3.1.
After a foray into touchscreen-only phones, Blackberry also previously brought back its familiar keyboard layout to Australia in 2014 with the Q10. However a spokesperson told CRN that its follow-up, the Q20, did not go on sale in Australia.
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