BlackBerry has released its newest phone, the Classic, at launch events in New York, Singapore and Frankfurt. The phone features a classic Qwerty keyboard, similar to the still-popular Bold, the first of which was released in 2008.

According to the Waterloo Ontario handset maker's CEO, the Classic is meant to appeal to loyal business customers. ​​“Everything you know about BlackBerry has been upgraded,” said Chen during the event.

The company says its physical keyboards are four times more accurate than software ones. The classic also features the same software, email technologies and privacy tools that have made the Bold a favourite with businesses. The new device will allow users to browse the web up to three times faster than the Bold 9900.

Coming to the specs, the Blackberry Classic features a 3.5-inch touch-screen display made of corning Gorilla Glass with a backlit QWERTY keyboard. The handset will be powered by a 1.5GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon processor paired with 2GB RAM and 16 GB of internal storage with microSD card support upto 128GB. The handset runs BlackBerry 10.3 OS and supports native Android apps via the Amazon Appstore.

Camera features include 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and 2-megapixel front facing camera. The device is backed by 2515mAh which is said to last up to 22 hours. The Classic is 13 centimetres tall and weighs 178 grams.

The Blackberry Classic is priced at $499 (Rs. 30,000) without a contract through BlackBerry’s website and Amazon.