BlackBerry London NFC smartphone BBX handset?

BlackBerry London NFC smartphone BBX handset?

An image and some specs have surfaced supposedly showing the BlackBerry London BBX NFC smartphone which could be the first hero phone that will usher in RIM’s QNX based OS. The image shows a different design mantra from BlackBerry showing what appears to be similar to the Porsche Design P9981, which didn’t win too many fans. This NFC smartphone that has the code name of BlackBerry London is said to be released in June next year and could represent the Canadian firm’s effort to gain back market share.

BlackBerry has a lot riding on its BBX OS that is due to hit the market next year. Lately, BlackBerry has lost a lot of market share as it failed to compete in the innovation stakes with companies like Apple and Samsung. BlackBerry has come out fighting, but sales figures so far are said to be lukewarm despite having included NFC in its latest range. BlackBerry has supported NFC in every one of its current crop of smartphones, so we have no reason to think that wouldn’t happen again with the BlackBerry London. The Verge first got the tip on this story and the photograph shown is said to be a dummy phone, so we don’t know if what we are looking at even represents the new look of BBX. We must say the UI looks clean and modern and the lack of a keyboard gives the somewhat strange shape of this phone some luster.

BlackBerry London BBX NFC smartphone rumored specification

The BlackBerry London is said to be thinner than an iPhone 4S and around the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S II. We have no idea at this point which Galaxy S II though. If the rumor is correct, the BlackBerry London NFC smartphone will ship with a TI OMAP dual-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz. In today’s market, that’s a great processor, but how that will look next June when we are likely to be up to our knees in quad-core smartphones? It could seem a little underpowered. The BlackBerry London NFC smartphone is said to come with the now standard 1GB of RAM on board and 16GB of internal storage. We don’t know as yet whether the BlackBerry London will support microSD, but it seems to be a standard on all BlackBerry devices at the moment.

The BlackBerry London is said to feature an 8-megapixel rear shooter, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. As yet, however, there is no news on video capture ability. That display is an unknown size and PPI, so we will have to wait to find out more than that.

So, the BlackBerry London NFC smartphone is completely in rumor territory at this point. But let’s assume that it is a real mockup of what we are going to see from BlackBerry this next year. Do you like the design? Are the specs getting you salivating, and could you see yourself buying an NFC smartphone that looks like the BlackBerry London mockup?