BlackBerry has launched the KeyOne smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The KeyOne, previously codenamed Mercury, is targeted at those people who prefer physical keyboards, as well as BlackBerry’s security features. BlackBerry has partnered with Chinese company TCL to manufacture the KeyOne. The smartphone will be available starting as early as April worldwide, and it will carry a price tag of $549 (or approx Rs. 36,584).
BlackBerry is synonymous with smartphones with built-in physical keyboards. The company’s first Android smartphone, the Priv, had a slide-out keyboard. As in case of KeyOne, this phone too features a physical QWERTY keyboard but without a Priv-like slider.
The keyboard is capacitive in nature, like the one on the BlackBerry Passport. Each key is customizable meaning you will be able to create up to 52 shortcuts with every key on the keyboard. For example, you can press the “I” key to open Instagram. There’s a fingerprint scanner built into the space bar, and with dragging your finger across the physical keys, you can scroll to new screens on your phone. Above the keys, below the display, there’s the traditional Android trio of capacitive buttons.
The KeyOne has an industrial design – and it reminds of the BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition. In terms of style, BlackBerry KeyOne has a metal frame, while the back of the phone is textured which not only gives the phone a premium look but help with grip as well. The phone offers a USB-Type C port down below, while a 3.5mm port is found on the top of the device.
Camera-wise, the KeyOne now sports a 12-megapixel Sony IMX 378 rear-facing camera (compared with the 18-megapixel of the Priv). Interestingly, it is the same sensor that can be found on the Google Pixel. There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the front for video calls.
The KeyOne gets a 4.5-inch display when measured diagonally and a resolution of 1620 x 1080. As for the hardware, the phone is powered by a Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB of storage and microSD support ( up to 2TB).
During the event, the company said the KeyOne comes with the largest battery ever to be featured in a BlackBerry-branded phone. The phone draws power from a 3,505mAh battery which should last a full day on a single charge. The KeyOne also supports Quick Charge 3.0. BlackBerry claims you can get to 50 per cent in 36 minutes.
The phone comes with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box, but you’ll find some BlackBerry Apps preloaded on the device including BlackBerry Keyboard, BlackBerry Hub and DTEK by BlackBerry. Google’s latest update to Android brings a number of new features, including multi-window support and better notifications. Plus, BlackBerry has added its own security features features, making the phone secure compared to any other Android device.
BlackBerry’s KeyOne will be its last smartphone designed and engineered in-house. TCL, the makers behind the Alcatel brand name, a Chinese company, will be manufacturing the KeyOne. In December 2016, BlackBerry signed a long-term deal with TCL that would allow them to design, build and sell BlackBerry-branded mobile devices. BlackBerry’s first devices under the new partnership with TCL were the Android-powered DTEK50 and DTEK60, which are basically rebranded Alcatel smartphones released in late last year.
BlackBerry’s devices were once ruled the smartphone market, providing access to emails on the go, but the company has struggled to keep up with competition from rivals Apple and Samsung. The Canadian smartphone company, led by John Chen, said last September that it would cease internal development of its smartphones and instead focus on its software and services business.
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