It’s been on the cards since BlackBerry World Live 2013, but now it seems the launch of the BlackBerry Z30 is almost upon us. And today, we’ve been treated to a few shots of the device next to Sony’s recently launched Xperia Z1.

We spoke with a handset tester at a big Canadian network at BlackBerry World Live 2013, and they told us that work was well underway on a Galaxy S4-sized version of the BlackBerry Z10 – which is likely the BlackBerry Z30 (pictured below).

There’s no word on when the handset will get official, but BlackBerry does have an event penciled in for September 18, which you can read more about below. We could see the Z30 launched here, alongside BlackBerry 10.2, and an official announcement regarding the rollout of BBM for iOS and Android.

The images of the BlackBerry Z30 next to the Sony Xperia Z1 were originally posted inside the CrackBerry Forums:

“This time around, the Z30 is looking a bit more polished but still showing some serial numbers on it indicating, it's still not yet a retail device but possibly one sent off for carrier testing, the terrible case handed out adds to that theory,” said the blog.

The BlackBerry Z30 is tipped to be the most powerful handset BlackBerry has ever released, so expect to see multicore processors, a high-resolution display (although Full HD is unlikely), and plenty of memory.

BlackBerry reveals September 18 event – could this be the BlackBerry Z30?

BlackBerry has begun issuing media invitations to an international press event, taking place on September 18 in France, Malaysia and India.

It’s a bit of an oddity as the company is, by all accounts, gearing up for a sale, but it also still does have major flagship handsets in development.

The previously leaked BlackBerry Z30 flagship is believed to be in a late testing stage and some believe this launch event may signal its arrival.

The other thing that’s a bit weird though, is the short notice – September 18 is the middle of next week, which makes us wonder if maybe BlackBerry has suddenly found either a buyer, or is about to announce a recently penned major partnership, as it mentioned it might when it assembled a special committee to investigate ‘strategic alternatives’ (including a possible sale) last month.

It’s not clear whether BlackBerry may also host this event in other locales as well.

Another possibility is BlackBerry’s often-talked-about licensing concept, with CEO Thorstein Heins previously saying that the company would consider licensing BlackBerry 10 to third party OEMs just as Google does with Android. Heins is currently keeping pretty quiet about things, but there’s not too long to wait until Wednesday 18 to find out what the heck is going on with the Canadian manufacturer.