The Leap will be available in the UK on April 29 for £205 — that converts to about $300, or AU$400. It’ll be available globally later on directly from BlackBerry’s website. The device runs BlackBerry OS 10.3.1, which tweaks the look and feel while also baking in a few new tricks, including improvements to multitasking and how background apps are managed. App selection remains BlackBerry’s Achilles’ heel, but BlackBerry 10 devices can also run Android apps: you can sideload an APK file, or download a selection from the Amazon app store, which comes preinstalled on the Leap.

But the biggest change is the keyboard: the Leap eschews the physical keyboard we’ve come to expect from BlackBerry for a virtual one. It supports multiple languages and will step in to correct your egregious typos, and generally behaves much like a virtual keyboard on a modern smartphone should. More importantly, the lack of a physical keyboard means you’ll have the full 5-inch display to play with. Its screen is also very bright, though the 1,280-by-720-pixel resolution is a touch low for a modern smartphone at this size.

The phone feels chunky, though at 0.37 inch (9.4 millimeters) it isn’t exactly onerous to hold. It also looks rather plain — some would argue it’s professional-looking. A 2,800mAh battery and a few power consumption tricks built into BlackBerry OS should net up to 25 hours of battery life. And the 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm 8960 processor feels nice and zippy while bouncing around menus and the like.
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