The BlackBerry PRIV, the company's newest smartphone which is the first to run Google's Android instead of BlackBerry OS, already became available for preorder at a price tag of $649. A few days before the scheduled shipping date for the new device, an online simulator cropped up over the Internet, showing a slew of special features, including Productivity Edge, BlackBerry Hub and a lot more.
The online simulator is believed to originate from Telus, one of the selected carriers that will market the PRIV in Canada. While this simulator has already been pulled out from the Web, some folks, particularly members of the CrackBerry forums, managed to keep images from the leaked simulator.
Productivity Edge
One of the cool goodies that have transpired from the leaked images is the Productivity Edge. It has been previously established that this handset is equipped with a 5.4-inch AMOLED display, touting 1,440 x 2,560 pixels, that is also curved on the sided (akin to the screens of the Galaxy S6 edge as well as S6 edge+ of Samsung).
The Productivity Edge allows the user to take advantage of the smartphone's dual-curve design by letting them take a peek at their messages, notifications, calendar and more simply by swiping on the edge of the screen.
Interestingly, the feature can work on either side of the handset's screen, either left or right.
Moreoever, the curved edge can also act as a charging bar when the PRIV is plugged in.
BlackBerry Hub
The BlackBerry Hub is a universal communication application, bringing together text messages, email, Twitter, Facebook as well as calendar appointments in a single screen.
Other Notable Features
A few more puzzle pieces were extracted from the leaked images, which include the following:
- Long-pressing the home button will show up email, Google Now and BlackBerry Hub icons.
- The smartphone can be unlocked by pulling down the keyboard or with a swipe.
- A few applications will support pop-up widgets that come out when users swipe upward from the application icon in the home screen.
- The Recents menu displays thumbnail icons in a variety of sizes. Most frequently used applications will show up as the largest thumbnails. To take applications away from the list, users can either swipe or tap the X button.
Other important features this smartphone has in store include the sliding QWERTY keyboard, 18 MP rear shooter (with optical image stabilization), a six-core Snapdragon 808 processor, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of expandable storage space as well as a 3,410 mAh battery.
"I really hope this device does well. BlackBerry is awesome and this device is really interesting. Would love to see them become more competitive in the Android market," writes Reddit user benwahhh.
