BlackBerry planning big step up with high-spec flipper

RIM looks likely to be bringing out its second BlackBerry flip device – but this one is rocking some high end specs and a whole new OS.

The new BlackBerry 9670 isn't the best looking phone we've ever seen in our life – it's short and squat in the leaked photos on BGR but it apparently is using BlackBerry OS 6.0, which is a big jump up in functionality.

The 9670 looks like it will be packing a full QWERTY keyboard, a 5MP camera (which would be the largest seen on a BlackBerry) and a 360x480 internal display.

One inside, one out

There's also a huge external screen, allowing you (presumably) to preview emails when they arrive so you don't have to go through all the palaver of opening the phone.

The addition of BlackBerry OS 6.0 is novel too – this is the first phone we've seen running a tabbed browser, use album artwork and add system-wide multi-touch support.

Such specs can only lead us to believe that the 9670 is touch enabled too, unless it's a wasted feature on this new device.

We'd imagine there will be some modification to this chunky little device before launch, but RIM needs to be careful about playing with form factors after the full touchscreen Storm series wasn't as well received as it would have liked.

From BGR