Mobile World Congress 2015: BlackBerry unveils its mid-range 4G all-touch Leap smartphone

BlackBerry unveiled its new Leap smartphone today at Mobile World Congress. It’s a 5-inch all-touch 4G LTE device aimed at young professionals and features the latest version of BlackBerry 10 OS.

The Leap has a 720p screen, a 1.5Ghz processor, and 2GB of RAM along with 16GB of onboard storage. There’s also an MicroSD slot that supports cards up to 128GB, and a 2,800mAh battery that promises 25 hours of use on a single charge.

Those specs are modest by today’s standards, but not shabby by any means. The device also has an 8-megapixel camera in the rear that’s capable of shooting 1080p video at 30 fps, as well as a 2-megapixel shooter in front, which should do the trick for amateur shutterbugs.

What’s more exciting than those specs is the OS. BlackBerry 10 has a number of neat features, including Amazon Appstore for downloading Android apps, and the voice-activated BlackBerry Assistant that you can command to quickly search the Web and send messages.

The Leap sounds like it could be a decent buy for people buying their first business-oriented phone. However, we’ll have to wait and see if BlackBerry can keep the price low enough to compete with similarly specced Android devices on the market.