Being right on schedule, BlackBerry in partnership with Optiemus has launched its KEYone smartphone today in India. The smartphone highlights its typical BlackBerry hybrid design containing both a touch screen as well as a qwerty keypad. The BlackBerry KEYone went on sale in USA and Canada in the month of May and has now arrived in India. The smartphone is priced at Rs. 39,990 and will be exclusively available for sale via Amazon from 8th August. The smartphone will be available in Limited Edition Black color. The launch offer includes 75 GB data with the purchase of smartphone from Vodafone for both prepaid and postpaid users.
Apart from its unique design, the KEYone comes with a hoard of interesting features that takes it to another league. The smartphone features a 4.5-inch Full-HD (1080 x 1920 Pixel) display with Gorilla Glass 4 protection on top. As mentioned earlier, the device also has a qwerty keypad which in itself holds some interesting functionalities.
Every key on the physical keypad can be customized and assigned for a shortcut to open an app or for other purpose. Also the Space Bar key embeds a fingerprint scanner which easily gets spotted in amongst other keys even in dark with the help of Backlit keyboard. Apart from this, the smartphone comes with touch navigation as well which lets the keyboard act as a touch pad.
The smartphone is powered by a 2.0 GHz Octa-Core Snapdragon 625 processor along with a 650 MHz Adreno 506 GPU. It comes with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage which can be further expanded up to 2 TB via micoSD card. The KEYone comes with upgraded RAM and internal storage in India as compared to the 3 GB RAM/ 32 GB storage variant launched in other markets.
The device runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat along with company’s skin which holds its own suite of security features. The smartphone comes with security apps such as DTEK and BlackBerry Password Keeper enhancing the data security of the user. It also includes other productivity apps such as BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Calendar, BlackBerry Productivity Edge, and BlackBerry Workspaces.
Coming down to the imaging department, as per the company, the KEYone holds the best camera in any BlackBerry smartphone till date. The smartphone features a 12 MP rear camera with a f/2.0 aperture Sony IMX378 sensor accompanied by a dual-tone LED Flash. It also comes with PDAF, 4K video recording at 30 fps and low-light enhancement. The smartphone holds an 8 MP front-facing camera with 1.12µm pixel size and f/2.2 aperture as well.
The smartphone packs a 3,505 mAh battery to power itself, coupled with quick charge 3.0 which is capable of taking the battery form 0% to 50% charge in just 36 minutes. The battery, as per the company, is rated to deliver more than 26 hours of continuous use and the smartphone also comes with the Power Center feature for granular control which lets the user customize battery performance of every app on the phone.
The smartphone comes with dual sim support which makes it the first dual sim BlackBerry smartphone in India, as per the company. Other connectivity options include, 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac dual-band (2.4 GHz/ 5 GHz), NFC, GPS/ A-GPS, Bluetooth v4.2, FM radio, USB Type-C (3.1), and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The on-board sensors include, accelerometer, ambient light sensor, digital compass, gyroscope, and a proximity sensor. The device measures 149.3 x 72.5 x 9.4 mm, and weighs 180 grams.