BlackBerry banks on QWERTY smartphones, lines up Passport and Classic for India

BlackBerry is back to its QWERTY formula that made the brand a success, and plans to launch its new Passport and Classic smartphones in India within the next few months. Apart from revealing this, the company has also announced its intention to keep its physical stores open instead of moving sales purely to the online medium.

Starting with the Passport handset, its interface does not stick to the whole BlackBerry format of a QWERTY keyboard paired with a trackpad. It adopts a 4.5-inch square touchscreen and a plain old physical QWERTY layout instead. The last mentioned is also built to support personalized commands by users.

The name of the odd-looking phone is inspired from, you guessed it right, the traveler’s passport which the company describes as a ‘universal symbol of mobility.’ It will be rolled out in two color options of black and white. Not much about the BlackBery Q20 has been unveiled so far, but we do know that it will be made out of premium materials.

BlackBerry Passport key specs list:

- 4.5-inch 1440 x 1440p IPS screen
- Quad core 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor
- Adreno 330 graphics
- BlackBerry 10.3 OS
- 3GB RAM, 32GB ROM, 64GB expandability
- 13MP camera with flash
- 2MP front-facing lens
- 4G, 3G, 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
- 3450mAh non-removable Li-ion battery

As for the BlackBerry Classic, you get a 3.2-inch 1440 x 1440p capacitive display, 2GB RAM, 64GB microSD card support and a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm chip. This smartphone runs on the same OS as its awkwardly shaped companion and was previously revealed as the Q20. The company maintains that users feel the hard buttons and trackpad are typical of the QWERTY experience provided by the brand, which explains the renaming.

There’s no word on pricing or exact release dates with regards to the roll-out of the BlackBerry Passport and Classic in India, but we’ll keep you updated as soon as we hear anything.

Samsung drops Google Maps, licences Nokia’s Here Maps for its Tizen powered devices and Galaxy smartphones

Samsung is slowly but surely severing ties with Google, and the company’s latest move had it signing up Nokia’s Here Maps for its Gear smartwatch and Galaxy smartphones. The application is being made available for Tizen devices and since the upcoming Samsung Gear S is the only wearable from the brand with a GPS chip, it will only work with this one as far as we know for now.

The beta version of Nokia Here Maps for Samsung Galaxy handsets will also be rolled out for free in early October, coinciding with the date on which the aforesaid smartwatch will be launched. As we’ve known for some time, Samsung is gearing up to become independent of Google even though it announced an Android Wear device for 2014.

Since Samsung owes a big part of its success to Android and continues to earn profits from its products running on Google’s mobile OS, it’s easy to see why the company is taking it slow. But this new move to incorporate Nokia’s Here Maps into its Tizen and Android offerings cannot be disguised as anything but an open snub against the Mountain View giant.

Nokia Here Maps will power an app dubbed Navigator on Samsung’s Gear S. This is designed to deliver turn-by-turn navigation for pedestrians as well as public transit routing. While it can work as a standalone software and allows people to store data on the smartwatch for offline use, the developers say that it may be paired with Here beta for Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung Galaxy smartphone owners can download the beta version of Nokia’s Here Maps for offline usage too. It offers turn-by-turn driving or walking guidance without a data connection for nearly 100 countries across the globe. It also manages to provide public transport maps for over 750 cities without needed Internet connectivity and live traffic information for more than 40 nations.

We bet Samsung is praying that Tizen will take off well, because who knows if decisions such as this move to Nokia Here Maps for its Galaxy phones and smartwatches will be taken kindly by Google.