BlackBerry seems to be having some rough times but they’re not one for giving up, if the soon-to-be-released BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9982 smartphone is anything to go by.
Think of it as a similar handset to Vertu’s Ti Ferrari handset and you’re most of the way there, though it’s not expected to have the Ferrari phone’s sadistic price. The Porsche Design P’9982 is thought to cost around $2,400 (around R25,000) when it launches in London tomorrow before going on sale at “…Porsche Design stores, select carriers and retailers around the world”, a far cry from R170k plus. But what does the phone entail?
The handset is based around the BlackBerry Z10, on a visual level at least, and will featured a 4.2-inch 1,280 x 768 display (356ppi), a dual-core processor running at 1.5GHz, 2GB of system memory and a custom-designed version of BlackBerry OS 10.2. It’ll support LTE and BlackBerry have made the standard storage option 64GB. Not bad specs for a BlackBerry, especially the storage, but where is the cost coming in?
The body accounts for most of the pricing increase, with a “…satin finished frame forged from the finest quality stainless steel, complemented by a hand-wrapped genuine Italian leather back door. The back door of the limited edition model is hand-wrapped in genuine Crocodile leather.” BlackBerry will also be rolling out a set of Porsche-specific BBM PINs with the handset, so that everyone knows that you own one of these phones.
Odds are good that if the P’9982 shows up in South Africa it will be in extremely limited numbers. If we manage to get our hands on one, we’ll have a review up as soon as we can bring ourselves to break the seal on the box.
Source: BlackBerry via Digital Trends