BlackBerry Classic Coming To T-Mobile's Network Starting May 13

Today, BlackBerry and T-Mobile announced a partnership to make the BlackBerry Classic available to T-Mobile's network and its 57 million customers starting May 13.

“BlackBerry is proud to partner with T-Mobile once again to offer the world's most secure and reliable mobile products and services that encourage productivity − whether they are individual users making the most of their day with the BlackBerry Classic, or an enterprise seeking to manage thousands of devices," said John Chen, BlackBerry Executive Chairman and CEO. “Together with T-Mobile, we hope to deliver highly differentiated solutions that appeal to our mutual users: the power professionals who depend on their smartphones to get things done and make things happen."

The Classic is BlackBerry's attempt to bring back the best features of the "BlackBerry" smartphone that many millions of people used to love before the iPhone and Android phones came along: iconic design, a physical keyboard and enterprise features.

The BlackBerry Classic brings some improvements to the old-style BlackBerrys such as having a touchscreen, a modern touch-optimized OS, and hundreds of thousands of applications thanks to the company's own app store as well as Amazon's store.

The device includes a 3.5" screen with a 720 x 720 resolution (yes, a square), a dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, Adreno 225 GPU, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, 8MP camera with HDR, face detection and auto-focus, a 2MP front-camera, LTE and a 2515 mAh battery that the company claims will last for 22 hours.

The BlackBerry Classic will be available on T-mobile's website starting May 13, and from May 15 in T-mobile's retail stores. In brick-and-mortar locations, it will be available for $0 down with $18.33 monthly payments for 24 months, for a total cost of $440.

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