Blackberry has admittedly not been having a good run, it had to abandon their OS to try their luck with Android through the Blackberry Priv.
The company has continued its efforts to save the brand and it lead them to licensing the Blackberry name to TCL, the parent company of Alcatel phones. Through this partnership, the company has come up with the repackaged the Alcatel Idol 4 to become the Blackberry DTEK50.
DTEK is a software solution that was developed to monitor a smartphone’s security, a staple feature of all Blackberry phones. The partnership has now produced another product, the new Blackberry KEYone that was launched at MWC.
The KEYone is the first product to be created from ground-up since the two companies joined hands. It retains some signature Blackberry features such as a physical keyboard which also doubles as a track pad thanks to its touch sensitive stainless-steel strips in between the key rows. Above the display is a 4.5 inch LCD screen with a full HD resolution, an unorthodox 1620 * 1080 to be exact, resulting to a 434 pixel per inch sharpness.
The phone is built with a metallic frame; the back hosts a leather-like texture that not only aides with better hand grip but also gives the phone a break from the monotony of glass and aluminum phones every other manufacturer is producing nowadays.
The back also holds a 12MP camera, it’s the Sony Exmor IMX378 which is the same one used by the latest Xiaomi Mi 5S, the new HTC U ultra, and the winner of 2016 photography, the Google Pixel series of phones. The front is a generous 8MP camera which is graced with a selfie flash.
Under the hood we get a Snapdragon 625 which is a champ in battery saving features, coupled with a 3 GB RAM and 32GB internal storage which is expandable to 256 GB. With such a chipset, the latest Android 7.1, and a huge 3505 mAH battery, you can rest assured that the KEYone will have amazing battery longevity. Moreover, fast charge is on board too.
Finally, Blackberry decided to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack intact unlike the likes of Motorola and Apple that ditched it.
On matters of price, Blackberry will go for KES 54,900 ($549) and has been confirmed for the North America and the Asian Markets.
This is not a mass market phone but might be targeting security sensitive personnel or agents.