BlackBerry Classic available for pre-order, could it be a return to form?

BlackBerry has quietly put its latest handset up for pre-order in the UK. You can secure yourself a BlackBerry Classic on the company's own website now.

There hasn't been much of a fanfare by the manufacturer over the phone's release but some feel that the Classic could be the handset to lure back fans of the brand. For a start it features a return to the conventional physical buttons at the bottom of the screen and a design more like BlackBerry devices of old.

The 4G BlackBerry Classic also has the ability to install Android as well as BlackBerry 10 apps, so addresses another concern of the lack of compatible software.

"We heard you and we built it," says the slogan on the pre-order page.

Pocket-lint was given a heads-up on BlackBerry's plans to return to a more classic device when we spoke to the company's vice-president of global product management, Francois Mahieu, at Mobile World Congress earlier this year.

"The message is ‘we hear you’," he said at the time. "You told us you love keyboards, you love your BlackBerry. You told us that maybe the Q10 was just a little bit difficult to use. And therefore, we are bringing back that utility belt that is the trademark of BlackBerry.

"That is effectively some of the hard keys, the trackpad and menu button that make a BlackBerry phone easier to use. And bringing the flow of old BlackBerry OS, where you can easily navigate between emails and going back to your homescreen."

"It might sound like a u-turn, but it’s not. Customers are saying, ‘Bring back the utility belt, please make the user navigation the way it used to be’ and that’s what we’re doing."

READ: BlackBerry: We all make mistakes, we need to focus on what BlackBerry is good at

The BlackBerry Classic could be the last BlackBerry phone for a while. It currently has no plans for any further devices for 2015.

It costs £349 and is available from BlackBerry's own shopping site.