Mobile World Congress has begun and the first major launch comes from BlackBerry. Their 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.
Like previously reported, 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.
READ MORE: BlackBerry and India’s Optiemus Signs Licensing Agreement
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 $549.
