BlackBerry Leap swaps keyboard for touchscreen (pictures)

BARCELONA - In addition to teasing an upcoming slider phone, BlackBerry unveiled its newest all-touchscreen Leap smartphone at MWC 2015.

The Leap comes in grey or white and will be available for $279 (or £180 or AU$350, conversion).

With its 0.31-inch profile (7.8mm), we noticed that the Leap felt thick. However, it had solid build quality.

Inside the device is a Qualcomm MSM 8960 1.5 GHz processor with 2GB of RAM.

It will run BlackBerry 10.3.1 and have encryption services, built-in malware protection, and options to back-up and wipe the handset.

Here's the headphone jack and sleep/power button up top.

At the bottom is a micro-USB charging port.

Though it won't have a physical QWERTY keyboard, user's will be able to peck out messages and emails with a digital on-screen keyboard.

In addition to a front-facing camera, it will also have an 8-megapixel rear shooter than can shoot 1,080p HD video.

It packs 16GB of storage for firmware and for your movies and music, apps and snaps. However, if you find yourself needing more memory, it does include a microSD card slot on its left edge.

A closer look at the 8-megapixel camera.

Aimed at the "young career builder," the Leap goes on sale around the world in April and will launch first in Europe. Click here for more of CNET's coverage of MWC 2015.