The BlackBerry 9720 first made its way into our lives thanks to a leaked User Agent Profile that surfaced over the weekend. As I'm sure you could guess, though, it's kind of tough to really get a feel for a new smartphone just by viewing a handful of code. That's why it's exciting to see that some actual images of the 9720 have made their way online.

Posted by ThaiBBClub, the images claim to show the BlackBerry 9720 hanging out in the wild and getting to know its Q10 sibling. The 9720 doesn't look terribly different from BlackBerry 7 devices of the past, packing a full keyboard, trackpad and a set of Send, BlackBerry, Back and End buttons. There's also a dedicated BBM key on the 9720's side and a camera on its rear, along with what looks to be a textured battery cover. The previous 9720 leak pegged the device as packing a screen resolution of 480x360 and the BlackBerry 7.1 OS as well.

It may seem kind of strange to see BlackBerry prepping a new OS 7.1 phone when it's also got newer BlackBerry 10 hardware out, but the company has said that it'll continue to offer BB7 hardware in emerging markets, and this 9720 looks like it could be an affordable device for consumers that can't shell out for the more-expensive BB10 products. Now that we've gotten a peek at the 9720 itself, we just need BlackBerry to make this thing official so that we can fill out the rest of its spec list and find out where in the world the phone is headed.

Via CrackBerry, ThaiBBClub