While the BlackBerry Q10 officially launched nationwide on T-Mobile Wednesday, news spread of another BlackBerry device that promises to be the company's next flagship smartphone. Called the BlackBerry A10, the full-touchscreen device will be the successor of the popular Z10, replacing it as the top-tier smartphone in BlackBerry's growing lineup.
Until now, BlackBerry had two top-tier devices: The BlackBerry Q10, the company's top device that features a physical keyboard, and the Z10, BlackBerry's challenger to the iPhone, both of which were unveiled at the re-launch of the struggling smartphone maker in January. Now the A10 enters the picture, building on the momentum of the previous two devices and moving them down to the mid-tier, according to Cnet.
There's already one mobile carrier in the U.S. that will help BlackBerry launch the A10. Sprint, which did not carry the Z10, will release the A10 in November, according to Cnet's anonymous sources, but expect other carriers to offer BlackBerry's next all-touchscreen device as well. Sprint reportedly opted out of offering the BlackBerry Z10 because it knew about the A10's development, and, according to Cnet, "felt the A10 was worth the wait."
There are few details known about the new A10 device, except that it sounds like an improvement over the Z10, and also built along the same lines. The new device will have a full touchscreen, and Cnet speculates that most of the improvements will be from better specifications and higher quality design. It's also likely that the new A10 will have an updated version of the BlackBerry 10 operating system—perhaps BB10.2.
The BlackBerry Z10 launched with a modern design, a 4.2 inch touchscreen with 768 x 1280 resolution, and was powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor with 2GB RAM. It featured LTE support, an 8-megapixel camera, and little extras like a micro-HDMI port. The A10 could improve on things like the camera sensor strength, processing power, and touchscreen resolution, along with offering a more robust and tick-free operating system.
Anonymous sources for Cnet are more likely to be accurate than a random person on Twitter, but take the A10 speculations with a grain of salt until we hear something specific and official from BlackBerry. Keep with us for updates as they come along.