BlackBerry Leap finally arrives in South Africa

BlackBerry has announced the availability of its next touchscreen smartphone in South Africa — the BlackBerry Leap.

The phone is the company’s latest contender in an ever-thickening mid-range market, boasting devices from Samsung, Sony and many other brands. BlackBerry largely owns this space in South Africa though, with a recent report by Phonefinder suggesting that the company’s Z3 smartphone is the most popular device in the country.

Read more: BlackBerry Z3 is South Africa’s most appealing phone, according to Phonefinder

The Leap is springing slightly above its weight though, unlike the Z3. It boasts aa 5.0-inch screen, a large 2800mAh battery which the company claims allows for 25 hours of heavy use and the most iconic piece of the BlackBerry puzzle, it’s rather brilliant BlackBerry OS 10.3.1.

With the OS, the phone brings with it features we’ve previously seen on business orientated handsets like the BlackBerry Passport and the BlackBerry Classic. The BlackBerry Assistant, for instance, can be “used with voice and text commands to help users manage work and personal email, contacts, calendar and other native BlackBerry 10 applications.” The company claims it can also draw a line between work and play, which makes it more akin to a secretary than a digital assistant.

Security is also a big marketing point on this device, with BlackBerry showcasing its encryption support, built-in malware support and the like.

For selfie-snapping business execs, there’s an 8MP rear snapper and a 2MP video camera up front. The former allows for 1080p video recording at 30fps, and there’s microSD card support for up to 128GB. There’s 16GB of baked-in storage too.

As for grunt? BlackBerry’s sticking to its tried and trusted dual-core formula. Qualcomm’s MSM8960 takes charge of processing, while it has 2GB of RAM in its possession to swap files around.

All in all, it seems a solid package. At the time of writing, there is no solid price information available but the Orange Store retails the device for just below R4000, so expect prices to hover around this region.