Sunday, February 20, 2011

BlackBerry Monaco makes brief video appearance with Verizon branding

Needless to say, the Storm 2's past its prime -- if it ever had a prime -- and if Verizon is going to continue with the touchscreen BlackBerry theme, it needs to re-up fast. That would be where the so-called Monaco comes into play, a phone that's been leaking under various names for over half a year now, and now we've got it captured on a brief, moderately blurry video with a Verizon logo clearly and prominently featured around back. It's looking pretty laggy here, but it's unclear how close the phone is to production -- both the hardware and software (said to be BlackBerry OS 6.1 with mobile hotspot capability, among other features) could be extremely early or near final. RIM's still got some repenting to do for the original Storm, so it'll be interesting to see if the Monaco (which could come to market as the Storm 3, or some other name altogether) fits the bill. Follow the break for the video.

[Thanks, Zecharias]