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With revenue slipping and many considering the BlackBerry brand to be slipping behind the likes of iPhone and Android, Canadian company Research in Motion has plenty of pressure on it to step up its game and launch some new and exciting products this year.
We know that the BlackBerry as we know it is set to evolve big time later this year alongside the launch of BlackBerry 10; a completely new and redesigned operating system for a new breed of BlackBerry smartphones.
As the tech world looks forward to a rumoured October 2012 launch for the first device, we may have just gotten our first glimpse at what the new range of BlackBerry smartphones could look like.
RIM has issued early prototype phones running BB10 to developers – these are known as BlackBerry 10 Alpha Developer phones. A kind soul out there has taken some candid snaps of his or her test device for us to gaze over, and we have to say it looks like a vast improvement.
While RIM may pull a Samsung and use bland ‘dummy’ cases for its prototypes in order to keep the final design a secret, this phone looks pretty neat as it is. It’s a slim and sleek phone with a full touchscreen, black finish and curved edges and corners. If you ask us, it kinda looks like a miniature version of the PlayBook tablet, which is by all means a good thing.
On one side of the phone we see a SIM Card slot, Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports, and on the other there looks to be a silver volume rocker button. The screen itself looks to be around 4-inches in size and we can also spot a front-facing camera and the classic BlackBerry notification LED.
Before the Apple fans shoot this phone down in a blaze of glory with comments of “it’s an iPhone rip-off!” we must remember that this is merely an alpha developer device. There may be plenty of changes made and a beta developer device launched, and so on. We’ll need to wait until at least October until we’re likely to see the first finished product, and we can’t wait.
Hopefully a great piece of software coupled with a great-looking phone that has modern smartphone features will set RIM straight and help the BlackBerry brand claw back some of its market share.
Thanks to CrackBerry for the leaked shots!
Let us know your thoughts on our comments below or via our @Gadget_Helpline Twitter page or Official Facebook group.
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