The smartphone is codenamed “Victoria” or “Visa”

Sep 22, 2014 10:01 GMT  ·  By

With just a few days left until BlackBerry Passport’s official announcement, word about another upcoming smartphone has just emerged online in the form of a patent filing.

By now, all BlackBerry fans know that the Passport is not a common QWERTY smartphone and that the Canadian company bet quite a lot on the unusual design of the device.

However, it appears that the Passport will not remain the only unusual smartphone launched by BlackBerry recently, as the company has filed a new patent that reveals a new odd design for a future phone, BerryReview reports.

According to the cited source, the so-called BlackBerry Victoria, or Visa, will be launched next year and will feature a physical QWERTY keyboard, but also a slide design.

The patent in question was filed back in 2012, but it was revised about two weeks ago, which is why we believe that BlackBerry may actually release such a device.

Still, the success of the Passport will probably weigh heavily on BlackBerry’s future roadmap, so there’s a possibility that the company may cut the Victoria (Visa) from the list of upcoming devices.

Anyway, here is what the revised patent filing states, “A keyboard portion is configured to move (with respect to a housing) between a deployed position and a non-deployed position.”

“A cover pivotally couples to the housing and is configured to at least partially cover the keyboard portion when the keyboard portion is in the non-deployed position and to reveal the keyboard portion when the keyboard portion is in the deployed position.”

“By one approach the cover is configured to move the keyboard portion between the deployed position and the non-deployed position as the cover pivots with respect to the housing.”

The Victoria (Visa) could be the largest BlackBerry smartphone to date

From the drawings attached to the patent we have noticed that the QWERTY keyboard features a pivoting cover that you can slide up and down. BlackBerry Victoria (Visa) does not seem to feature a common slider form factor.

The pivoting keyboard cover appears to be the only thing suggesting the slider design, but apart from that the smartphone will look and function exactly like a bar handset.

Nothing else is revealed in the patent filing, but BerryReview claims that the BlackBerry Victoria (Visa) may be released sometime in early Q2 2015. The smartphone is said to pack a 5.5-inch display, thus making it the largest BlackBerry smartphone available on the market if the Canadian company does not launch another device with a bigger screen until then.

Three-row keyboard with pivoting cover (2 Images)

Three-row keyboard with pivoting cover
Three-row keyboard with pivoting cover
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