Reportedly the image of the smartphone seen below is that of the previously rumored BlackBerry London prototype; the first real image of the phone spotted on the net thanks to the folks over at CrackBerry.

In efforts to stand up tall amongst the vastly growing smartphone world, RIM doesn't refer to it as a smartphone at all; rather, a ‘Superphone'. So what's so Super about it? Well, it's quite hard to say from what we can tell so far. It apparently uses the new BlackBerry 10 OS which RIM is hoping will get it right back into the game again, but the device looks more or less the same as BlackBerry's underwhelming PlayBook, albeit slimmed and shrunken down.

On the subject of hardware, there is a whisper of both Texas Instruments’ OMAP5 and Qualcomm 1.5GHz dual-core chips being tested in the device at the moment. If that's the case then it should certainly turn out to be snappy enough. It's probable we'll be seeing the launch of a couple other models first; those being code named Laguna and Lisbon which will arrive in the U.S. while the London will be heading to the UK later in the year.

KitGuru says: Will this be the phone that brings RIM right back into swing of things? They'll have to do quite a bit more than just slap a polished new OS on it.

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