Optiemus Infracom, the brand behind the sales and distribution of BlackBerry-branded devices, is all set to launch a new smartphone in India on August 1. The company has started sending out media invites for the same, which has a tag line that reads, “Do More Different.”
However, the company has not revealed the about the upcoming smartphone, it is highly likely that it will launch the BlackBerry KEYone, which was first announced at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017. The smartphone is available for purchase in the UK from Selfridges retailer at a price tag £499, which is approximately Rs 41,367.
BlackBerry KEYone is going to be the last smartphone designed by BlackBerry, as in September last year the company had announced to give away the license for designing and producing smartphones to its partner TCL. On the other hand, BlackBerry has entered into a long-term licensing agreement with Optiemus Infracom Ltd for the production of future BlackBerry Android handsets in India. Optiemus will also manufacture, design and sell future handsets neighbouring countries including Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh as well.
The major highlight of the device is the Smart Keyboard, which has a fingerprint sensor on the spacebar and a capacitive touch on the entire keyboard for scrolling. One can ‘Flick’ predictions using the BlackBerry KEYone keyboard, and also assign shortcuts to keys for actions such as browsing, triggering the camera or Messaging app.
The smartphone sports an aluminium frame and a 4.5-inch full-HD (1620×1080 pixels) IPS display with a Pixel density of 433ppi and has Corning Gorilla Glass protection. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core SoC clocked at 2GHz, coupled with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 506 GPU. It has a 32GB of inbuilt storage that is expandable via microSD card (up to 2TB).
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The smartphone runs on Android 7.1 Nougat operating system. It is backed up by a 3505 mAh battery and has QuickCharge 3.0 with a ‘Boost’ charging feature that gives 50 percent charge in “roughly 36 minutes.” On the camera front, the smartphone offers a 12-megapixel rear camera with a Sony IMX378 sensor and an 8-megapixel front facing the camera with a wide-angle lens and a flash module. Besides, the smartphone offers 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and a USB Type-C port. The smartphone measures 149.3 x 72.5 x 9.4 mm and weighs 180 grams.