Photos BlackBerry Bold successor appear online

Photos have appeared online of the smartphone that will probably be called the BlackBerry Q20 or BlackBerry Classic. This successor to the Bold series has a touchscreen with a physical QWERTY keyboard underneath.

The photos, which appeared on the Weibo account of someone who often has prototypes of BlackBerrys, show that the device has a significantly larger screen than an older version of a Porsche Design-BlackBerry Bold. It can also be seen that the screen is larger than last year’s BlackBerry Q10, with its 3.1 “screen. According to Crackberry, it is a 3.5” screen. The device also has a Snapdragon S4-soc and 2GB RAM; that S4 soc is presumably the same as in last year’s Z10 or Z30. Qualcomm hasn’t made S4 socs for a while now.

In addition, as was clear before, the buttons return under the screen: this allows users to quickly access the phone app, for example, or answer or hang up a phone call with a physical button. Because the software also has a button for the phone app at the bottom left of the screen, it has been replaced on the device by a shortcut to the universal inbox BlackBerry Hub.

The BlackBerry Classic is no surprise: CEO John Chen previously announced it was coming and even showed it at a shareholders’ meeting this summer. At that time, however, the device was not nearly as visible.

This successor to the Bold 9900 from 2011 should be released this fall. BlackBerry said earlier in September it would organize an event to present its new devices: in addition to the Classic, there will be another model with a square screen and physical keyboard, the Passport. It is unknown when that event will be.