First Look At A BlackBerry 10 Hardware Keyboard In The Flesh?

Has the tide started to turn on RIM’s BlackBerry fortunes already? Sure, the launch of BlackBerry 10 is going to be the real trial-by-fire, but there’s a palpable sense of optimism in the air lately, with rumors looking to BB10’s arrival faring even better than expected. We’ve had quite a few opportunities to check out some of the upcoming full-touch BB10 hardware, in the form of leaks showing-off the so-called L-series handset, but we’ve been itching to get a better look at the N-series, which will have a hardware keyboard like so many of its BlackBerry predecessors. It’s appeared in renders, sure, but we’ve been hoping to get a real look at the hardware in the flesh. Well, this isn’t quite what we were hoping for, but we suppose it’s a start: an image of what’s apparently the N-series keyboard has been leaked.

If you compare that pic to the N-series renders we’ve seen (below), you can see that it’s quite the strong match. While there’s always the possibility that this component is destined for other hardware, it has such a close resemblance to what we were expecting that it’s hard to imagine it could be for anything else.

We’re still hoping to get a look at a fully-assembled N-series BB10 phone before RIM’s late-January launch event rolls around.

Source: iiBerry
Via: BerryReview