During the BlackBerry Q1 2014 conference call, BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins let it be known a new BlackBerry 7.1 device would be released soon and after many sneek peeks at it in unofficial capacity, the time has come to make it all official. The BlackBerry 9720 has finally been announced and will be making its way to Asia, EMEA and Latin America in the coming weeks.

As its new BlackBerry 10 operating system struggles to get off the ground, the company is still depending on the old version 7. During its last fiscal quarter BlackBerry shipped 6.8 million smartphones, but only 2.7 million phones running the new OS.

The launch of the BlackBerry 9720, which runs a refreshed version of the BlackBerry 7 OS, may play to the company’s dwindling strength. The smartphone has a re-engineered physical QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated BBM key, a trackpad and a a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 480 x 360 pixel resolution. It has 512MB of RAM.

The BlackBerry 9720 also has a 5-megapixel camera and an FM radio. Connectivity options include HSPA, 802.11n and A-GPS. The phone is packed with a 1450mAH removable battery, which is claimed to offer up to 7 hours of talktime and 18 days of standby time.

On the software side, BlackBerry has focused on social networking features. Users can write a message once and post it simultaneously to their friends on BBM, Twitter and Facebook, for example.

The updated interface also lets users swipe to unlock the phone or access the camera from the lock screen, among other enhancements.

Currently there is no indication of pricing or availability in India, but stay tuned for more information.