The TCL-made (the Parent of Alcatel), Android-powered BlackBerry KeyOne will start retailing this April at $549.
The first debut of the KeyOne was in January at CES, and the upcoming Mobile World Congress will be its official launch party. Details about its specs, features, and prices are already out; this time not as rumors or predictions. The details we have are solid facts, and without much ado, let’s jump under the hood and see what hidden therein:
BlackBerry KeyOne Review
The phone also being referred to as BlackBerry Mercury comes in a chassis that measures 5.87×2.85×0.27 inches. It has 4.5-inch 1620×1080 LCD display with a 3:2 aspect ratio. It has a 12MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera.
It has a 3GB RAM and 32GB of onboard storage expandable via a MicroSD card. It has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and a 3505mAh battery. The 625 chip is, according to Steve Cistulli; enable the smartphone to run for longer hours in between charge. As Cistulli (the TCL North America Communications President) puts it, the 625 chip enables the phone to last for more than a full day on a single charge.
The Capacitive Keyboard on the BlackBerry Mercury
The BlackBerry KeyOne keyboard is capacitive; meaning you can move between home screens by swiping through the physical QWERTY keyboard. The space bar doubles up as a fingerprint sensor. On KeyOne, you can assign any key to become an arbitrary keyboard shortcut. Take, for instance, G for Gmail, M for music, and W for WhatsApp.
The phone also comes with the BlackBerry Hub, a unified messaging app that includes WhatsApp and Slack. It is extremely useful to triage all your important messages all in one place. Typing on the keyboard feels comfortable and familiar; bringing a sense of nostalgia before touch screens were the in-thing. Often you would hear people complaining of how typing on a touch screen seems cumbersome, but it grew on them.