In what’s amounting to one epic roll of the dice, RIM’s betting its future on a revamped OS and all-new hardware to run it. We’ve picked up bits and pieces of its plans along the way, including the revelation that the platform’s launch will see two main hardware branches when it arrives, a full-touch L-series and the hardware-QWERTY-packing N-series. A couple weeks back we got to take a look at some in-development L-series hardware in the flesh, and now it’s back on camera, giving us a little closer look.

One thing we get to see for the first time here is the removable battery cover. Knowing RIM, that’s not something we’re surprised to see, but it’s nice to get a look at here and be able to check out what are apparently the connectors for the phone’s NFC antenna. What we can see matches-up with the leak from earlier in the month, and really has us thinking that RIM might have finalized the handest’s design; we’ve been watching it mature out of what was the Dev Alpha model, and have been unsure of just how it would end up.

We still eagerly await a nice non-render look at that N-series hardware with its physical keyboard, but we’ll just have to keep that up a little longer.

Source: BlackBerry Italia
Via: BGR