14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 2014, BlackBerry was expected to announce a new smartphone, codenamed BlackBerry Ontario. The device was said to the new flagship smartphone, a direct upgrade to the BlackBerry Z30, but it never made it in the hands of consumers.
Now, live images of the late Ontario smartphone surfaced over at CrackBerry, revealing what would have been the BlackBerry Ontario. The smartphone was expected to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 platform, together with 2GB of RAM and BlackBerry 10.3 OS out of the box.
The operating system was thought to be introduced together with the BlackBerry Ontario, but it later arrived in September 2014 on the BlackBerry Passport, which has a different design compared to the late BlackBerry Ontario.
BlackBerry Ontario never received a retail name
BlackBerry Ontario will never make it to the market, but images of the prototype do show the design that BlackBerry was working on. BlackBerry Ontario never received a retail name, while the smartphone didn’t seem to feature BlackBerry’s signature physical keyboard, as opposed to the BlackBerry Passport.
In addition, BlackBerry Ontario appears to have a 16:9 aspect ratio, quite different from the 1:1 format found on the Passport. Moreover, the smartphone is shown in the black variant, while a single-lens setup can be seen on the back, together with the LED flash on top. The Passport comes with a LED flash located at the bottom of the rear camera, and a speaker grill is visible on the back of the smartphone, together with rather large bezels compared to more recent flagships.
BlackBerry’s signature QWERTY keyboard might have been the reason why the company decided to go with the Passport, rather than the Ontario smartphone. Two years after the Passport was launched, BlackBerry shut down its hardware division and licensed its brand to third-party manufacturers, which recently brought the KEYone and other smartphones. Now, BlackBerry focuses on bringing enterprise solutions and mobile software solutions to the market, while occasionally still helping with the design of new BlackBerry-branded phones.