BlackBerry Classic Brings Back the Glory Days but Is It Still Relevant?

Remember the good ol’ days when BlackBerry was a dominant force in the mobile phone industry? I remember using the little track ball thing on a friend’s BlackBerry and thinking how cool it was. Fast forward a few years and BlackBerry has fallen behind the curve by not adapting to the changing landscape of smartphones but this year has been a comeback year for BlackBerry by first introducing the intriguing Passport and finally releasing the Classic. By going specifically against the trend of full touchscreen smartphones, BlackBerry is hoping to solidify its position and even gain new customers by making it simpler and easier to use a smartphone.

Looks

The Classic looks…classic. It looks very similar to the old BlackBerry Bold and Curve and just about every model. It has the same body shape and curves as those old models so the nostalgia will certainly be present. The touchscreen is only 720 by 720 but then again, BlackBerry is focusing on business users so the high resolution that would normally be preferred for media consumption is really not necessary on the Classic. Part of that reason is because the full QWERTY keyboard is the main feature of the front of the Classic. The keys have little curved edges that make for easy and fast typing so if you want to send emails galore, you will be pumping them out like nobody’s business. As far as construction, it is just as sturdy as ever; there will be no Bendgate here.

What It Does

Where the Passport was definitely a flagship smartphone, the Classic is definitely a mid range smartphone. It has a good amount of RAM at 2GB, a good amount of internal storage with the inclusion of a micro SD clot for expansion with a mid range processor. Granted, the processor was actually one of the best processors from about a year ago and has since been passed in performance but that means it will have no trouble running anything you want, even video calls. There’s also a camera and such but the main focus is that QWERTY keyboard. It even has both shift buttons, an ALT key, and a symbol key. Even on other phones with QWERTY keyboards, you usually find yourself lacking those extra keys.

There’s also a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to do smartphone things. For example, hitting B will launch the browser while hitting W will launch the weather app. Pretty nifty stuff for the professional types. If you’re one and missing the good ol’ days, you can’t go wrong with the BlackBerry Classic.