Back at the CES 2017 event, Blackberry, owned by TCL showcased a throwback-style keyboarded smartphone, which also runs Android. At that point of time, the company thought of keeping the specs of the smartphone hidden, but rumours have leaked the complete specs.
That said, the phone looks very classy with the old-style Blackberry fashioned keyboard. However, TCL has gone with somewhat relatively mid-range specs with the KEYone. The phone packs a 4.5-inch Full HD display with a resolution of 1080x1620 pixels that further extends to a pixel density of 433 PPI.
Under-the-hood, the Blackberry KEYone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC, clubbed with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The storage can be further expandable up to 2TB via a microSD card slot. Graphics in the phone will be taken care by Adreno 506 GPU. The Snapdragon 625 SoC is built on the new 14nm manufacturing process and helps in extending the phone's battery life by 40 percent.
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In terms of camera, rumours earlier revealed that the Blackberry KEYone would feature the same camera setup as seen on Google Pixel phones. And the rumours are true. The KEYone comes with the same 12MP rear camera as seen on Pixel phones with large f/2.0 aperture size and 1.55um lens. And we all know what the cameras on Pixel phones achieved. Up front, there's an 8MP front-facing camera with a f/2.2 aperture.
The phone has all the standard set of connectivity options such as Wi-Fi 802.11/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, 4G LTE, VoLTE, and NFC. The phone also has a fingerprint sensor embedded into the keyboard of the phone and a USB Type-C (USB 3.1) can be seen at the bottom side of the phone.
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The phone boots Android 7.1 Nougat out-of-the-box and is armed with a 3505mAh battery, which also has support for fast charging in the form of Qualcomm's QuickCharge 3.0. The phone weighs 180 grams and measures 149.3 x 72.5 x 9.4mm.
Coming to the major aspect of the phone, the trademark Blackberry Keyboard, which can be tweaked to perform several operations such as quick launch apps, 'Flick Typing'- a gesture that can be used for predictive texting. Interestingly, the keyboard itself acts as a touchpad. Finally, the pricing of the phone. The Blackberry KEYone will retail for $549 (approximately Rs. 36584) and will go on sale from April 2017.
