Blackberry is going to come up with another smartphone at the MWC 2017, and it is the Blackberry KEYone smartphone, which is the actual name for Blackberry Mercury, or what was famously called the DTEK70. It is TCT Communication, the new owner of the BlackBerry brand. TCT itself is a part of the TCL.
If it was from TCL, you’d have expected to see some stuff that is related to Alcatel, but here, TCT Communication has worked to bring out a perfect Blackberry smartphone, having both, a touchscreen and a physical QWERTY keyboard. On the front is the 1620x1080px 4.5-inch display with the 3:2 aspect ratio.
A soft textured back is what keeps the body softer but it is an anodized aluminium frame on the side. The back of the device has a 12-megapixel camera with the IMX378 sensor and we are yet to see some details of the front camera. What’s under the hood? The Blackberry KEYone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor along with Adreno 506 GPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Having that chipset means there is support for the Qualcomm Quick Charge feature that will allow you to charge the KEYone from zero to 50% in just about 36 minutes, and that is a 3505 mAh battery packed into this phone.
We will be updating with more details as soon as the Blackberry press conference happens.
Even though it is a physical keyboard in there, the Blackberry KEYone’s keyboard can also respond to touch gestures and you don’t have to press the buttons always, even though you can. There’s something called as flick typing, shortcuts, and one of the keys also have a fingerprint sensor for the security.
Blackberry has gone with the Android 7.1 Nougat OS for the KEYone and as expected, the Blackberry Hub is embedded into the interface, along with the DTEK security app, which, the company claims to offer the most secure smartphone experience possible.
