Unlocked BlackBerry Hamburg to cost $350

The BlackBerry Hamburg is a device that, up to now, has been spotted in a photo or two as well as benchmarks via Geekbench — but even these evidences tell us that the device is a mid-range at best and will have some nice hardware design. There isn’t much else to know from these, but BlackBerry is preparing to announce the unlocked BlackBerry Hamburg (that will also make its way to carriers in locked versions, no doubt) soon.

The news comes to us from source The Globe and Mail, who says that the unlocked BlackBerry Hamburg will have a pre-September release and cost $350 in Canadian dollars ($270 USD). The price is definitely indicative of the mid-range market, and the pre-September release tells us that the unlocked BlackBerry Hamburg will make its debut before the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone 7 Pro are unveiled by Apple and after Samsung moves forward with the Galaxy Note 7 announcement. One rumor on the table says that BlackBerry will unveil the unlocked BlackBerry Hamburg next week, July 26th, though there’s no way to confirm that specific date.

TCL will manufacture the Hamburg for BlackBerry, with the device featuring a 5.2-inch, Full HD display with a 1080p screen resolution, a 1.5Ghz, octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC, Qualcomm Adreno 405 GPU, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, with an 8MP front camera, 12MP back camera, and a 2,610mAh battery. The device has passed through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is what all devices need in order to be legally up for sale on the US market.

The source also says that BlackBerry is selling mid-range handsets not necessarily to recoup marketshare and a place in the high-end market, but to continue to provide its security services for business professionals who may decide to leave and head to some other manufacturer if the Canadian company lets its security measures go by the wayside. Of course, BlackBerry wants to win in the long term, but if it can give people great handsets now, despite the marketshare, it may win some of the old-timers back to the company in the long run.

July 26th will come soon enough, after which we’ll discover what this mid-range phone is all about. More frightening than yet another BlackBerry phone that hasn’t been successful is a phone that ditches the codename for a moniker most horrid.

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