BlackBerry is hoping that since consumers didn't buy many of its 4.2-inch BlackBerry Z10, making a 5-inch version might help. A new leak of the upcoming smartphone's back case has leaked again, this time comparing it to the Z10.
BlackBerry has faced an uphill battle in trying to resurrect the company that was once considered to be king of smartphones. It released its next-generation BlackBerry 10 OS and BlackBerry Z10 smartphone at the end of January after several delays. It seemed that the company was making strides in its comeback. BB10 was seen as a fresh new operating system and the Z10's 4.2-inch display helped show off many of the intuitive gestures and features the company built into its OS. The company soon followed up with a device many thought should have been the first smartphone to be released, the BlackBerry Q10. The Q10 was signature BlackBerry; it included the company's iconic QWERTY keyboard that has kept users loyal to its smartphones.
The company and analysts claimed that sales of both devices were very well. When the company reported its Q1 2014 earnings it became very clear that analysts and BlackBerry were completely off with it claims. The company sold 6.8 million smartphones, but only 2.7 million were BB10 smartphones, its previous generation devices were selling better than its current handsets. BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins tried to ease investors by claiming that the company was still in its initial launch phase and was still seeing great adoption and reception of BB10. It appears that the company thinks a 5-inch smartphone could help turn things around.
A new leak of the BlackBerry A10's back case has leaked again on a Chinese forum and this time it is shown off next to the Z10's back case to give an idea of how large the new smartphone will be. The A10 case has the AT&T logo we told you about recently and when placed next to the Z10's case, we get an idea of the A10's phablet-like proportions.
The smartphone is expected to feature a 5-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED display, be powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a separate graphics chip, will run BlackBerry 10 OS 10.2, include 16GB of internal storage, and 2GB of RAM. Those have been the only specs to leak so far and the smartphone is expected to launch in the fall.
It remains to be seen if shipping what appears to be a 5-inch Z10 will do much to turn things around for BlackBerry.
