BlackBerry first phone for the year is the BlackBerry
KEYone, which was formerly known as Mercury. It’s not surprising the
inspiration for the name comes from the phone’s physical keyboard.
The BlackBerry KEYone sports a 4.5-inch 1620 x 1080
IPS display that sits above a QWERTY keyboard. There is a Snapdragon 625
processor under the hood and a 3505mAh battery with QC 3.0 support for juice.
The device comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, though there is a microSD
card slot that accepts up to 2TB cards.
The BlackBerry KEYone does
feature the same 12MP Sony IMX378 1.55μm sensor found in the Google Pixel. The
front facing camera is an 8MP shooter with an 84° field of view that records
1080p videos at 30fps. The KEYOne has NFC and features a USB Type-C 3.1 port.
BlackBerry’s target market for the KEYone are
business professionals. It is evident in the design of the phone which pays
homage to the BlackBerry Passport and BlackBerry Classic. It also comes with
BlackBerry’s security software and a bunch of BlackBerry apps.
The BlackBerry KEYone comes with Android 7.1 Nougat
out of the box and will go on sale in early April for US$ 549.
