Chinese tech giants TCL has taken the wraps of launching their first blackberry phone, the Keyone. Blackberry is now just the licensing partner while TCL is now manufacturing the Blackberry Keyone. Also, TCL will look after actual sales and distribution of the phone. If you are not aware, TCL is most famous for manufacturing budget oriented LED TVs and also launches “value for money” phones under Alcatel branding.
Now, let’s dive into the Blackberry Keyone. It’s typical blackberry phone and can be taken as the successor of the Blackberry Priv. The Keyone features a 4.5-inch 1080P IPS display (1620 x 1080) with 3:2 aspect ratio. The display is guarded by a gorilla glass 4 protection. It has a full-on qwerty keyboard that sits right below the display.
The fingerprint sensor is located on the space bar of the keyboard. There are lots of shortcuts and features embedded in the keyboard. One feature the company demonstrated was assigning a particular function to a key. Like, say W for weather, F for Facebook. The keyboard can also recognize swipe and gesture which means you don’t always have to press it.
Under the hood, the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 Soc which is a midrange octacore processor build on 14nm process architecture. Coupled that with 3505mAh battery, you can expect excellent battery life. The phone also supports quick charge 3.0. Optics wise, it has a 12MP rear camera (Sony IMX378 sensor) with f/2.0 aperture, 1.55 microns sensor, phase detection & laser autofocus, and dual-LED dual tone flash. The front houses an 8MP snapper.
The Blackberry Keyone is running on the latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat with lots of Blackberry security build on each layer. The company also promises monthly security updates for the phone. It comes with a Dtek app that examines how secure your device is.
The Blackberry Keyone will be available worldwide through various retail and online partners starting from April. The company has priced the device at US$549.
