At the ongoing MWC 2017 Trade Show in Barcelona Spain, TCL has unveiled the Blackberry KEYone – it’s first ever Android OS based Blackberry smartphone with a full physical keyboard. It is priced at $549/€599/£499 depending on the market and will arrive sometime in April.
As expected under the agreement signed, Blackberry KEYone is designed and manufactured by TCL, and joins the DTEK50 and DTEK60 in the company’s Blackberry portfolio. Previously known under the codename Mercury, it combines a 4.5-inch touchscreen display with the Blackberry’s signature physical keyboard (QWERTY), productivity suite and security softwares.
Housed in an anodized aluminium metal body and soft touch textured back cover, the device also comes pre-installed with Android 7.1.1 Nougat OS and the DTEK security software. The keyboard responds to touch gestures, supports flick typing and can launch up to 52 customizable shortcuts. The fingerprint sensor is embedded into the spacebar.
Full Blackberry KEYone Specifications
- Operating System: Android 7.1 Nougat OS
- Dimensions: 149.3 x 72.5 x 9.4mm
- Weight: 180 gram
- Display: 4.5-inch (1620 x 1080 pixels), 3:2 aspect ratio, scratch-resistant glass protection
- Pixel Density: 443PPI
- Processor: 2GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 14nm SoC
- Graphics: 650MHz Adreno 506 GPU
- Memory: 3GB RAM
- Storage: 32GB built-in + up to 2TB external storage via microSD
- Main Camera: Rear 12MP camera with dual-tone LED Flash, Sony IMX378 sensor, 1.55μm pixel size, 1/2.3″ sensor size, f/2.0 aperture, PDAF, 4K video recording
- Front Camera: 8MP camera with 1.12µm pixel size, f/2.2 aperture
- Connectivity: 4G LTE, Dual Band Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/GLONASS, NFC, USB 3.1 Type-C
- Battery Capacity: 3505mAh battery with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
- Others: Blackberry DTEK, Blackberry Hub, QWERTY keyboard
