Spy shots: BlackBerry "Kickstart" flip phone?

First came leaked pictures of RIM's purported 3G BlackBerry 9000, and now this—fuzzy photos of what could well be the first BlackBerry flip phone. It's a crazy idea that just might work.

The spy shots—which, once again, come courtesy of the bloggers at The Boy Genius Report—show a clamshell-style phone with a SureType keypad (which has a pseudo-QWERTY layout with two letters on each number key, same as on the BlackBerry Pearl), along with a trackball, a roomy, decent-looking internal LCD, a good-sized external display, and the telltale BlackBerry branding. No other details just yet.

Flip phones are nothing new for most manufacturers, but RIM has been married to the candy-bar style since...well, since the first BlackBerry rolled off the assembly line.

There has been at least one flip phone with BlackBerry-compatible features—namely, the Samsung SGH-T719 with BlackBerry Connect, on T-Mobile—but it was, of course, made by Samsung, not RIM.

Naturally, there's been no confirmation from RIM about the Kickstart, although BGR seems pretty confident that we'll see the phone before the year is out. (Click here for the full photo gallery.)

I've known plenty of folks who prefer flip phones to candy-bar handsets, so I'm guessing that there's a pretty decent market for a BlackBerry clamshell...but what about you? Would you cough up the cash for a flip-open BlackBerry, or would you rather stick with the candy-bar design? [Photo credit: The Boy Genius Report]

Related:
BlackBerry Kickstart, the clamshell flip phone? We’re unveiling it to you for the first time! [The Boy Genius Report]