BlackBerry may be ready to make up with T-Mobile, as a new image shows the upcoming BlackBerry Passport smartphone with the magenta carrier's branding.
T-Mobile's logo on the back of the upcoming BlackBerry Passport suggests that the two companies may be putting aside their differences and resume collaboration. Not too long ago, BlackBerry announced that it will no longer see eye to eye with T-Mobile over some "differences in strategies."
If a newly-leaked image turns out to be accurate, however, it looks like at least one new BlackBerry device will be available from T-Mobile. The photo of the purported BlackBerry Passport with T-Mobile branding comes from OurBerries, a publication dedicated to revealing news about BlackBerry. On the other hand, while the image may look convincing enough, there's no guarantee that it's the real deal. Photoshopping a carrier logo onto a device is not that hard, so make sure to take this leak with a grain of salt.
BlackBerry has been swimmin in muddy waters in recent years, after losing significant ground to rivals on the smartphone market. Once at the top of the food chain, BlackBerry is now struggling to stay relevant and the Passport is its latest effort to make a comeback.
The BlackBerry Passport also marks the company's effort to gain some ground in the high-end category of the fiercely competitive smartphone market. The handset sports an intriguing form factor and comes with some neat features, but it remains to be seen whether it would be able to turn things around for BlackBerry.
In terms of specifications, the BlackBerry Passport comes with a 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 1440 x 1440 pixels and Gorilla Glass 3 protection on top. Under the hood, the smartphone packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.2GHz, paired with 3GB of RAM. Other specs include 32GB of internal storage capacity, microSD support for additional memory of up to 64GB, a three-row QWERTY keyboard, a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and 4K video recording capabilities, and a 2-megapixel front shooter. A large 3,450 mAh battery will keep things up and running. On the software side, the new handset will also come with BlackBerry Assistant, the company's new digital assistant and answer to Apple's Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft's Cortana.
It remains unclear at this point whether the BlackBerry Passport will indeed hit T-Mobile, but more details should become available shortly. The smartphone is set to launch on Sept. 24 and BlackBerry should offer more information at that point. In the meantime, take all leaks with a grain of salt.
