BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983 Leaks in Press Photo, Costs $2,000 / €1,500

Good news, BlackBerry fans rich enough to spend the required money for the Porsche Design handsets launched in collaboration with the Canadian company, as a new expensive phone is about to make its debut on the market.

The first picture of the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983 has just been published by the folks over at N4BB, and while the phone looks gorgeous, its specs sheet doesn’t look so good for the price you pay. This is not the first time we hear about the Porsche Design P’9983, as the device popped up online as BlackBerry ‘Khan’ in late July. Some of the phone’s specs were known since that time, but for those who missed it here is a quick reminder. BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983 is supposed to sport a small 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen display with an unknown resolution. However, from the picture leaked it does seem to feature a square touchscreen, but this has yet to be confirmed. The reason the phone has such a small display is that it also comes with a full QWERTY keyboard. In fact, the P’9983 will be the first BlackBerry 10 OS smartphone launched by Porsche Design that also packs a physical keyboard.

On the inside, the smartphone will be equipped with a 1.7GHz processor, probably provided by Qualcomm, which will be complemented by no less than 3GB of RAM.We also know that the Porsche Design P’9983 will be packed with 64GB or internal memory, but we don’t have any info on whether or not it will offer microSD card slot as well. All in all, BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983 will not come cheap, so those anxious to get it will have to come up with around $2,000 (€1,500) upfront.

BlackBerry Porsche P'9983 (front)

BlackBerry Porsche P'9983 (back)
Images credits to N4BB

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BlackBerry 2014 Roadmap: No High-End Full-Touch Devices This Year

Most BlackBerry fans are anxious to get their hands on the Passport, which is expected to arrive sometime in September. However, there’s a small portion of fans who prefer huge, all-touch devices and they will not see the Passport as a good replacement for their Z10 or Z30 phone.

Their hopes have been fueled by John Chen’s previous statements that the company is really looking into getting a phablet out, if their finances permit it, of course. Unfortunately, BlackBerry will not be releasing any all-touch high-end smartphones this year, according to the company’s roadmap for the rest of 2014. The folks over at N4BB report that they got their hands on a Blackberry 2014 Global Roadmap, but only the devices that we already know of are confirmed. It appears that BlackBerry will focus on only four aspects for the remaining of the year: Affordable, Classic, Innovative and Prestige. This means that only four BlackBerry 10 smartphones will make it on the market this year. The affordability aspect will be highlighted by the so-called BlackBerry Z3 LTE Manitoba, which was leaked about a month ago along with the BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9983.

The main target for the BlackBerry Z3 LTE will be those who wish to upgrade from feature phones and BBOS, as well as for “enterprise fleet renewal.” The second aspect on which the company confirmed that it would focus its marketing efforts is the Classic. Well, this will be covered by the Blackberry Classic, also known as the Blackberry Q20. The device is seen as an “upgrade for BlackBerry QWERTY base and enterprise fleet renewal.” The BlackBerry Passport is the Innovative handset that will be released this year and is meant to “bring X-Pros back to BlackBerry.” The smartphone is also aimed at business executives. Last but not least, in the Prestige class, BlackBerry plans to release the Porsche Design P’9983, which will be the first BlackBerry 10 QWERTY smartphone created by the latter.

These are all the devices mentioned in BlackBerry’s roadmap, which means the Canadian company has no intention of bringing a high-end phablet on the market by the end of the year. The situation might change next year, but that will probably depend on how good the sales for the smartphones launched this year will be. For the time being, BlackBerry doesn’t think that a powerful all-touch BlackBerry smartphone would make sense, so those waiting for one will have to wait until next year, at least.

BlackBerry Z30
Image credits to BlackBerry

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AMD Leaks Name of Future GPU Architecture: 20nm Faraway Coming in 2015

Everyone who's been following tech news probably knows that AMD will hold an anniversary webcast tomorrow, during which it will reveal some info about the Tonga-based consumer graphics cards, among other things.

Now, though, there's apparently been a leak about the generation of graphics processing units that will follow the Volcanic Islands led by Hawaii. According to a website called CHW.com, Advanced Micro Devices will, in 2015, release the Farway line of GPU. These GPUs will be designed on the 20nm manufacturing process (at last) and support Microsoft's DirectX 12 API (application programming interface). All of AMD’s future GPU and APU products will use Faraway GPUs, even the Project Skybridge ambidextrous computing architecture, which allows x86 Cores and ARM cores to be pin-to-pin compatible.

Unfortunately, details don't exist for either new technological advancement. We only know that the Faraway GPUs will be mass-produced by both TSMC and Globalfoundries. Probably because the former has failed to deliver on production promises repeatedly. Now we just have to wait and see what NVIDIA counters this with. Maybe it will confirm previously rumored plans of jumping straight to 16nm, though we doubt it.

AMD Faraway GPU line coming in 2015
Image credits to AMD

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HTC Nexus 8 Tipped to Launch Before October 9

The always present in the rumor mill Nexus 8 has been expected to arrive for quite some time now. The tablet was widely anticipated at the Google I/O conference, but it failed to make an appearance.

However, sources familiar with the matter claimed that the tablet would arrive at some point, we just didn't know when. Now Chinese leakster @Upleaks claims the Nexus 8 will soon be upon us. They don’t provide us with a definitive date, but they claim the slate will arrive before October 9. Why this specific date? I have no clue. Yet, the device is expected to arrive with the latest form of Google’s OS, Android L and bundling the powerful NVIDIA Tegra K1 chip.

An older leak claimed at some point that the Nexus 8 would become available once Android L is ready to roll out. But now we’re granted a threshold when the event is expected to happen. Google is known for its habit of rolling out a Nexus device alongside a major Android update. For example back in 2012, we saw the Nexus 4 arrive alongside Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, and in 2013 the Nexus 5 and Android 4.4 KitKat came together.

HTC Nexus 8 tipped for October
Image credits to TechSpot

HTC T1 will be released before Oct 9.
— @upleaks (@upleaks) August 22, 2014

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Blackberry Passport Spec Sheet Confirms 4.5" Screen, 13MP Camera, and More

If you are a BlackBerry fan and can’t wait to get your hands on the next flagship smartphone that’s about to hit the market, the Passport, then you will be pleased to know that the full specs sheet of the device has just been leaked online.

Although some of the major features already appeared on the Internet weeks ago, there are still some tidbits of information that might be of interest to you, such as the camera and connectivity options. But first things first: one of the major concerns for those who consider buying the BlackBerry Passport that of not being able to fit it in their pocket due to its unusual square form factor. Well, according to the specs sheet leaked by N4BB, BlackBerry Passport measures 128 x 90.3 x 9.3mm (9.6mm at camera location) and weighs 194.4g (battery included), which makes it rather heavy for a 4.5-inch device. Moving on to the insides of the Passport, there are no surprises, as the leaked document confirms what we already knew. BlackBerry Passport will be equipped with a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon (MSM8774-AA) processor, an Adreno 330 graphics processing unit clocked at 450MHz, and no less than 3GB of RAM.

The smartphone also packs 32GB of internal memory, which should be enough even for heavy users, but in case you need more storage, you can add up to 64GB via microSD card slot which is located under the back cover, not on any of the phone’s sides. The Passport’s 4.5-inch display supports 1440 x 1440 pixels resolution (1:1 aspect ratio) and 453dpi (dots per inch). It also comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for extra protection and 10-point multi-touch. Now the big news is that BlackBerry decided to include a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera that features OIS (optical image stabilization), LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording at 60fps. Also, the main camera has a 5-element f2.0 lens, back side illumination, and 5x digital zoom.

In the front, there’s a secondary 2-megapixel camera with fixed-focus, 3x digital zoom, which can also capture 720p videos. This one’s more than decent to take selfies or for video calls. Connectivity-wise, BlackBerry Passport offers a wide range of options, including LTE, HSPA+, Bluetooth 4.0 LE (Low Energy), dual-band Wi-Fi, GPS with A-GPS support and NFC (Near Field Communication). Keep in mind that it will only accept nano-SIM cards. Last but not least, the upcoming handset is powered by a high-capacity 3450mAh battery that should provide about 19 hours of usage + 8 hours of standby time when BlackBerry Power User Profile is selected. What do you think about BlackBerry Passport’s hardware? Do you still want it or do you want it even more now?

BlackBerry Passport render
Images credits to Humster3D

BlackBerry Passport
Images credits to BlackBerry

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