Blackberry is back with a bang again. Lot had changed since Blackberry launched a smartphone last time: The company is now owned by Chinese vendor, TCL, and the Blackberry KEYone will be the last phone to be built by Blackberry, and from now the new parent company takes care of everything Blackberry.
The Blackberry KEYone is not a new smartphone by any means. Yes, it was first unveiled at the CES 2017 earlier this year and impressed everyone with its charming looks and old-age Qwerty keyboard. That said, the phone looks incredibly great, but Blackberry has gone with a sort of mid-range specs for the KEYone.
The Blackberry KEYone, formerly known as Blackberry Mercury comes with a 4.5-inch Full HD display with an aspect ratio of 3:2 and a pixel density extending up to 433 PPI. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC aided with just 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The storage can be further expandable up to 2TB via a dedicated microSD card slot.
Blackberry KEYone Key Specifications
- 2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 14nm Processor
- 3GB RAM With 32GB ROM
- Curved 4.5 Inch FHD IPS LCD Display
- 12MP Camera With Dual-Tone LED Flash
- 8 MP Front Camera
- Physical QWERTY Keyboard
- 4G, NFC
- Android 7.1 Nougat
- Bluetooth 4.2
- 3505mAh Battery
One of the major highlights of the new Blackberry KEYone is that the phone comes with the same camera setup that has been used in Google Pixel phones. It doesn’t mean that the phone matches with the Pixels in real life scenario because Google has tweaked the image processing to a whole new level in the Pixel phones.
The phone uses the same 12MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 1.55um lens. Frontal, there’s an 8MP sensor with f/2.2 aperture. The phone features a massive 3505mAh battery and has several connectivity options. That said, there’s a USB Type-C port the bottom of the phone that also has support for QuickCharge 3.0. Blackberry claims that the device can charge from zero to 50 percent in 30 minutes.
The Blackberry KEYone runs Android 7.1 Nougat straight out-of-the-box with several Blackberry’ security additions. The phone also has a fingerprint sensor embedded into the space bar of the keyboard. The KEYone is priced at $549 (approx. Rs. 36,700), and TCL will start shipping the phone from April globally. Blackberry is yet to announce the launch date of the phone for the Indian market.
