BlackBerry was speculated to be working on a QWERTY Android phone codenamed ‘Mercury DTEK70’. Today, at an event in MWC 2017, Barcelona, BlackBerry has announced the same phone as KEYone.
It is the last smartphone designed by BlackBerry. It is made by TCL Communication Technology (TCT), whose parent company is TCL Communication. To jock up your memory, it is the same company behind Alcatel phones.
For starters, mobile houses physical 4-Row backlit QWERTY keyboard. It’s keys respond to touch gestures, flick typing, supports up to 52 customization shortcuts and houses fingerprint sensor inside space bar.
The smartphone runs on Android 7.1 Nougat OS and comes with Security and productivity suite from BlackBerry. The device measures 149.3 x 72.5 x 9.4 mm and weighs 180 grams. It has soft touch textured back and anodized aluminum frame.
Under the hood is a 2GHz octa-core Snapdragon 625 (14nm) processor paired with Adreno 506 GPU (650MHz). It has 3GB RAM, 32GB built-in storage space and allows further expansion up to 2TB using MicroSD card.
It has 8MP front camera with F/2.2 Aperture and 1.12µm pixel size. On the back side is a 12MP main camera unit with dual-tone LED Flash, Sony IMX378 Sensor, 1/2.3-inch sensor size, F/2.0 Aperture, 1.55µm pixel size, supports PDAF and 4K video recording.
The BlackBerry KEYone is priced at US$ 549 / €599 / GBP 499 depending on the market. It comes in Black color option and will be available globally from April 2017.