BlackBerry Magnum Hybrid Smartphone Pictures Leaked

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The BlackBerry Magnum is not official yet but it’s a handset which will be getting a lot of attention from faithful BlackBerry fans but not only. The handset is going to be one of the first RIM creations to feature both a touchscreen display and a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s a Storm meets Bold kind of a phone which should have been conceived a long time ago.

One of the most important things people love in a BlackBerry is the full-featured, easy to play with, QWERTY keyboard. The Storm and the Storm 2 replaced the keyboard going touchscreen and virtual QWERTY instead. That was not a bad idea but neither the Storm nor the Storm 2 managed to fight the iPhone. Not being the iPhone killer that people expected, the Storm didn’t exactly made it to the BlackBerry hall of fame.

Handsets like the Bold or the Curve series are far more popular than the Storm so, needless to say, RIM will not dump the QWERTY keyboard for good anytime soon. That’s why I still wonder why instead of making the Storm in the first place not create something like the Magnum? It would combine the usefulness of a full keyboard with the touchscreen interface that would get you faster through the menus.

Sure the Magnum doesn’t look like a true iPhone competitor, does it? But who’s to say that a true iPhone competitor should be all touch but no QWERTY? The Palm Pre has a keyboard and so does the Droid, and other Android smartphones for that matter. They are all supposed to be iPhone killers, aren’t they?

As you can see the Magnum has been spotted already and we hope to see it at MWC 2010. There are no specs available at this point but it’s not pretty difficult to imagine a BlackBerry Bold 9700 or Curve 8900 with a touchscreen, is it? Take out the trackpad and you’ll get something like the Magnum.

We have no arrival dates for this baby yet folks, but according to leaks and rumors, the Magnum is not the only hybrid smartphone from RIM out there. A certain Dakota is also going to sport the same features at some point in the future.