The Canadian company BlackBerry has officially unwrapped its KEYYone phone which at one time was rumored as ‘Mercury’. Its unveiling happened at a pre-event at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.
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The KEYone is designed by BlackBerry but its manufacturing part is taken care by TCL as per a licensing agreement between the two of them. It comes with an improved physical QWERTY keyboard which over the years has been one of the key highlights of BlackBerry phones. The security features on the phone make it the “most secure Android phone” yet, as claimed by its maker.
From a distance, the KEYone design does seem to be an impressive one featuring an aluminum unibody and a soft textured back. As far as the specs-sheet is concerned, it is not that extraordinary when compared to the others in the Android fold. It packs a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1620 x 1080 which produces sharp images and crisper text.
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Under the hood, though, it houses a power-efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset running along with the Adreno 506 GPU and 3Gigs of RAM. It comes with 32GB internal storage along with a microSD card, and a decent 3,505 mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 support.
BlackBerry has banked upon the recent Android 7.1 Nougat with an additional layer of customized security patches and apps. For shutterbugs, there is a 12MP Sony IMX 378 Sensor based rear camera and an 8MP selfie camera with flash. It is worth mentioning that primary camera sensor is exactly as the Google’s Pixel smartphone.
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The KEYone all 52 keys can be assigned for dedicated apps for quick launch, for instance, W for Whatsapp, I for Instagram. The phone also comes with an embedded fingerprint sensor, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. The BlackBerry KEYone shipping starts from April and will be priced at $549 (approx. 36,500).
BlackBerry KEYone Specifications
| Model | BlackBerry KEYone |
| Display | 4.5-Inch, IPS LCD |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 Processor |
| RAM | 3GB |
| Internal Storage | 32GB |
| Software | Android Nougat 7.1 |
| Primary Camera | 12MP rear camera (Sony IMX 378 sensor), f/2.0 aperture |
| Secondary Camera | 8MP selfie camera |
| Dimensions and Weight | To Be Announced |
| Battery | 3,505mAh (QuickCharge 3.0) |
| Others | 4G VoLTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, USB Type-C and OTG, 3.5mm |
| Price | Approx. Rs. 36,500 |
