BlackBerry Dakota leaked with HD video, NFC, 3G hotspot
updated 09:50 am EST, Thu January 13, 2011
BlackBerry Dakota finally pictured, specified
RIM's BlackBerry Dakota was resurrected today with a leak that included both its first recent image and a major leap in hardware features. The Bold-like, touch-capable device should now have a much larger and sharper 2.8-inch, 640x480 display. It would also be the first BlackBerry to record HD video, BGR said, and would catch up to Apple and Google with a 3G hotspot feature to share the connection.
It would similarly add the promised NFC for wireless payments and would occupy a relative high end among BlackBerrys as a whole. RIM would make it one of the rare phones to have 802.11n Wi-Fi on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and would outfit it with 4GB of storage, which while small would be the most ever preloaded with a BlackBerry.
A five-megapixel camera, motion sensor and compass would be taken from recent BlackBerry phones. RIM wouldn't yet be ready to move to QNX on its phones as the device would use a new version of its current phone OS, BlackBerry 6.1.
No clues have emerged of a ship date, but CTIA in late March or BlackBerry World expo in early May would be the most probable options.
