Bell seems to be killing two birds with one stone…I mean ad, as they start promoting their LTE-Advanced network in Eastern Canada along with the new BlackBerry Priv. Their LTE-Advanced network, which supports speeds up to 200 megabits per second is now live in several Canadian cities – Toronto, London, Calgary, Vancouver, Fredericton, Sydney, Charlottetown and Halifax. Only customers with certain newer Android smartphones will be able to take advantage of the higher speeds – Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge and Galaxy S6 Edge+, as well as the HTC One M9. In order to achieve these speeds, Bell claims they use three separate signals with carrier aggregation.
Bell reports that their subscriber base is just over 8.1 million and that 57-percent of them use their LTE network. Bell would like to increase its customer base in Eastern Canada by promoting their faster speeds, thus the push for their LTE-Advanced network. Just as a concert director brings together all instruments in harmony, Bell has decided to include the new BlackBerry Priv as part of their LTE-Advance campaign. On the front of the promotional flyer, Bell has cleverly included the BlackBerry Priv in the picture. In this way, Bell is getting out the information about its LTE-Advanced network and promoting Canada’s beloved BlackBerry brand at the same time.
This all but confirms that Bell will be carrying the new BlackBerry Priv, which is due to come out in the upcoming weeks. The device was rumored under the codename, BlackBerry Venice, but they decided on the final name of ‘Priv’ in reference to their reputation for privacy and security. It is thought to have a 5.4-inch Quad HD (QHD) LCD display that will have dual-curved sides – like the Samsung Galaxy Edge, but not as pronounced. The brains of the device will be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor and 3GB of RAM. It is also thought to contain an 18MP main camera and a 5MP front-facing camera (FFC) for selfies and video chatting. Besides the camera, which BlackBerry is calling a “Schneider-Kreuznach certified camera,” they are also touting “extraordinary audio quality.” The device looks like a normal smartphone, but is actually a ‘slider,’ so you can pull out that legendary BlackBerry keyboard on which to do your typing – so you have the choice of on-screen or keyboard typing. The BlackBerry Priv will be running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with BlackBerry enhancements overlaid on the pure Android OS.