MWC 2015 – Full Touchscreen BlackBerry Leap Targets Privacy Conscious

BlackBerry has launched the BlackBerry Leap, an ‘affordable’, full touchscreen phone targeted at privacy-conscious consumers and businesses, at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

The LTE-enabled BlackBerry Leap boasts a five-inch edge to edge touch screen rather than the physical keyboard sported by the recently-released BlackBerry Classic and BlackBerry Passport.

It ships with BlackBerry 10.3.1, the most recent version of the operating system which introduces the voice-activated BlackBerry Assistant.

BlackBerry Leap

The new smartphone features built-in encryption, malware protection and remote backup to ease administrator’s security concerns, and has access to both the BlackBerry World and Amazon Appstore for applications. BlackBerry claims that even with ‘heavy use’, the Leaps’ battery will last for a full day.

It comes with 2GB of RAM 16GB of storage which can be expanded via a Micro SD card slot, an eight megapixel rear facing camera and a two megapixel front facing sensor.

“In today’s mobile world – influenced by trends like BYOD – where personal and corporate data are frequently under attack from hackers, companies and everyday consumers are finding out the hard way that mobile security is paramount,” said Ron Louks, presidents of devices at BlackBerry. “BlackBerry Leap was built specifically for mobile professionals who see their smartphone device as a powerful and durable productivity tool that also safeguards sensitive communications at all times.”

“With BlackBerry Leap complementing the latest BlackBerry portfolio, including BlackBerry Passport and BlackBerry Classic, we continue to provide products and services that meet the needs of our consumer and enterprise customers.”

BlackBerry has also used MWC to further its cross-platform strategy. It has revealed BlackBerry Experience Suite, which offers packages of its software for use on Android, iOS and Windows devices, further Samsung Knox integration and a cloud-based version of BES 12.

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