BlackBerry and T-Mobile’s relationship might be temporarily on hold, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grab one of the company’s devices to use on your favorite carrier’s network. The most recent of those is the all-touch BlackBerry Leap; the company’s latest attempt at cracking the budget end of the market. It’s an interesting concept and is – sort of – the latest descendent of the BlackBerry Z10 which didn’t do so well a couple of years ago.
This latest smartphone by the Canadian tech firm features a 5-inch, 720×1920 LCD display. It may seem a little underwhelming on paper but at 294 pixels-per-inch its not far from that “magical” 300ppi number. On first impressions it seems sharp, color accuracy is good and viewing angles are decent. It’s powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor and has 2GB RAM along with 16GB internal storage (expandable further to 128GB via Micro SD). Camera specs aren’t enthralling. But given BlackBerry’s history with cameras, it’s hardly surprising that early shots with the 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera are disappointing. I’ll share some of those images with you with my review later this month. If that doesn’t whet your appetite, maybe the promise that the 2,800mAh battery will get you through “25 hours heavy use” will.
Most important – of course – for T-Mobile users is the knowledge that the device sold unlocked at ShopBlackBerry.com supports both LTE bands 2 and 4 (sorry, no band 12). So you’ll be able to take advantage of both the 900 and 1700/2100 bands as well as swapping SIMs for other carriers if you need to.
