We’ve just had confirmation from Vodafone UK that the Blackberry Leap will be available from them, for their business customers. We will bring you more news as and when we get it, including pricing and availability.
What’s the Blackberry Leap you ask? This was the surprise announcement that, to be fair, did shock a lot of people. Everyone though Blackberry was pulling the plug on hardware, focusing on software, and boom, they announce the Leap. A phone focusing on startups, the young, the go-getters. Specs are modest, and nothing to go crazy about, but so is the supposed price.
Following is a quick run down on the specs:
Size
- Height 144 mm / 5.67 in
- Width 72.8 mm / 2.87 in
- Depth 9.5 mm / 0.37 in
Weight
- 170 g / 6.0 oz
Navigation
- All-touch screen, with intuitive gesture based navigation
Keyboard
- On screen BlackBerry® Keyboard (portrait/landscape), featuring contextual auto-correction, next-word prediction and a personalized learning engine that gets to know the way you type
Dedicated keys
- Volume Up/Down, Mute, Lock (for Power On/Off)
Display
Resolution
- 294 PPI
- 1280 x 720 resolution
- 24-bit colour depth
Screen size
- 5″ diagonal
- 16:9 aspect ratio
OS & desktop software
Operating system
- BlackBerry 10 OS
Desktop software
- BlackBerry® Blend™ software to bring the power of your BlackBerry smartphone to your computer and tablet
- BlackBerry® Link software for your computer to enable synchronization of data and media
Performance
Processor
- Qualcomm MSM 8960 1.5 GHz
Memory
- 2 GB RAM
- 16 GB Flash
Expandable memory
- Expandable memory via hot swappable microSD memory card (Up to 128 GB)
USB ports
- Micro USB 2.0 high speed port—allows charging and data synchronization of the device with a USB cable
Power
Battery
- 2800 mAH (minimum) non-removable Lithium Ion battery
Battery life1
- Up to 25 hours mixed use1
- Up to 12 hours GSM talk time
- Up to 15 days GSM standby time
- Up to 17 hours UMTS talk time
- Up to 16.5 days UMTS standby time
- Up to 80 hours audio playback
- Up to 9.5 hours video playback
Camera & video
Rear camera
- 8 megapixel auto-focus camera
- Flash, continuous and touch to focus
- Video image stabilization
- 5x digital zoom
- 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps
- 2DOF video stabilization
Front camera
- 2 megapixel fixed-focus camera
- 720p HD video recording
- 3x digital zoom
Multimedia
Image formats
- BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, SGI, SVG, TSG, TIF, WBMP
Audio & video formats
- AAC, AMR, AWB, FLAC, M4A, MKA, MP3, OGG, WAV, WMA, 3GP, 3GP2, ASF, AVI, F4V, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG4, WMV
Audio & video encoding/decoding
- H.264, MPEG-3, H.263, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WMA 9/10, VC-1, VP6, PCM, LPCM, MPEG-2, FLAC, GSM, Vorbis, QCELP, MJPEG
Apps
Pre-loaded apps
- Multimedia: Music, Videos, Pictures, Camera, Picture Editor, Story Maker
- Productivity: BlackBerry Hub (Email and Social Messaging), BlackBerry Assistant, Universal Search, Calendar, Contacts, Browser, Text Messaging, Clock, Calculator, Documents To Go™, File Manager, Adobe® Reader, BlackBerry® Remember (memos/tasks), Box™, Dropbox™, Evernote®
- Other: Amazon Appstore, Phone, BBM®(Video and Voice), BlackBerry® World®, Facebook®2, Twitter®2, LinkedIn®2, foursquare®, YouTube®, Weather, Maps/Navigation, Setup, Help, Tutorials
Security
- Password protection, screen lock, and sleep mode
Alerts & notifications
- Tone
- Vibrate
- On-screen or multi-color LED indicator
- (Notification options are user configurable)
Voice input/output
- Dual microphone for noise cancellation (receiver)
- Hands-free headset capable
- Bluetooth® headset capable
- Integrated hands-free speakerphone
Network & connectivity
Network bands
- North America
- FD-LTE: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 17 (2100/1900/AWS/850/2600/700 MHz)
- HSPA+ 1, 2, 4, 5/6 (2100/1900/AWS/850 MHz)
- Dual Carrier 42 HSPA support
- Quad Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2, 3, 5, 8 (1900,1800,850,900 MHz)
- Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific
- FD-LTE: 1, 3, 7, 8, 20 (2100/1800/2600/900/800 MHz)
- HSPA+ 1, 2, 5/6, 8 (2100/1900/850/900 MHz)
- Dual Carrier 42 HSPA support
- Quad Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE 2, 3, 5, 8 (1900,1800,850,900 MHz)
Wi-Fi®
- 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz
- 4G Mobile Hotspot
- Video out via Wi-Fi Display / Miracast
FM Radio
- FM Radio receive (headset as antenna)
Bluetooth®
- Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (LE) and EDR
GPS
- Assisted, Autonomous and Simultaneous GPS
- Preloaded with BlackBerry® Maps application
- Support for User Plane and Control Plane GPS
Sensors
- Accelerometer
- Proximity
- Ambient light
Accessibility
- BlackBerry® Magnify, for customers with partial vision –
- Face-to-face video chat with BBM® Video
- Voice Control for sending messages, placing calls, search and more
- Adjustable screen brightness, scalable fonts
- Teletypewriter (TTY) Support –
- Certain models rated for use with hearing aids –