Blackberry will unveil its next smartphone, the Blackberry Key2 on June 7. The Key 2 is the successor to 2017’s Blackberry KEYone, a premium Android device accompanied by company’s signature QWERTY keyboard. Blackberry Mobile made this announcement on its official Twitter account by posting an image that reads “An Icon Reborn”. The image also shows the launch date of KEY2, which is June 7, 2018. The phone will be announced in New York at 10 AM ET. The branding of KEY2 is pretty interesting, with new Blackberry KEY2 logo with a numeral “2” rather than two spelled out, like the company did with KEYone.
Though there’s no official word on the KEY2 specs, the smartphone will essentially retain the design of older KEYone with iconic QWERTY keyboard. The device will also upgrade to more powerful Snapdragon 660 mobile platform and as well boost the RAM to 6GB. The phone is also said to switching to the dual camera configuration.
A Blackberry phone believed to be KEY2 also appeared on Chinese regulator TENAA’s website. The TENAA listing shows the pictures of the upcoming device. From the looks of it, the Key2 will retain the physical keyboard of the KEYone. The rear features the dual camera configuration with sensors aligned horizontally along with a LED flash.
TENAA also posted the potential specifications of the smartphone. The KEY2 with model number BBF100-4 is made by Huizhou TCL Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. The phone sports 4.5-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, featuring a resolution of 1620 x 1080 pixels.
Under the hood, Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 660 chipset replaces the Snapdragon 625 seen in last year’s Blackberry KEYone. The CPU is paired with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The storage can further be expanded up to 128GB via microSD card.
Moving to cameras, the KEY2 is adorned by dual camera setup on the rear comprising of a main 12MP sensor and secondary 8MP sensor. In addition, the device is said to sport 8MP selfie camera. Fueled by a 3,360mAh battery, the Key2 is expected to run Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. The pricing and availability of Blackberry KEY2 remain unclear at this point, but more information is expected as the launch date closes in.
