Blackberry has revealed its new flagship 5-inch BlackBerry Z30 smartphone at an event in Malaysia with the promise it will be available to buy in the UK from next week.
Rumours had been circulating that BlackBerry was planning a new phone, but given recent high profile releases of the iPhone 5s, Galaxy Note 3 and Xperia Z1, there was an absence of fanfare.
The BlackBerry Z30 is the Canadian company’s fourth device to arrive with the BlackBerry 10 operating system following the BlackBerry Z10,Q10 and Q5 released earlier this year.
As well as the 5-inch Super AMOLED display, the Z30 also boasts a 1.7GHz processor with quad-core graphics and a 2,880mAh battery.
Several new features have been added, such as the new BlackBerry Priority Hub which collects priority messages from email, social networks and other accounts and presents them for your perusal.
BlackBerry has also added stereo speakers and what it calls BlackBerry Natural Sound – enhancements aimed at improving the clarity of voice and video calls.
Verging on phablet territory, the Z30 will go head-to-head with 5-inch Android handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Sony Xperia Z1. But it might not be enough to pull the fading smartphone company back from the brink.
Demand for the earlier Z10 and Q10 handsets hasn’t been stellar and BlackBerry is openly looking for buyout options in an effort to take the company private.
Credit: T3
