Keyboards are back in style with Blackberry’s KEYOne at MWC 2017

While beleaguered Blackberry has all but become a shadow of its former self in reach and influence with their phones now being made by Chinese smartphone manufacturer TCL, they’re still giving it the old college try with their KEYOne phone that was just announced a scant few hours ago ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Originally given the codename ‘Mercury’ at CES last month, the Blackberry KEYOne notably comes with the brand’s distinctive QWERTY keyboard and an aluminium chassis to give it a surprisingly polished look .

Up front, the KEYOne is comes with a 4.5-inch, 1,620 x 1080 pixel 433ppi LCD with a 3:2 aspect ratio, a Snapdragon 625 processor running the latest Android Nougat 7.1 along with 3GB RAM and 32GB of expandable memory. The rear comes with a 12-MP camera with a Sony IMX378 sensor that has phase detect autofocus, an F/2.0 lens and 4K video capture capability while the front has an 8-MP fixed-focus F/2.2 camera with large 1.124 micro pixels and 1080P video capture capability.

While the hardware looks pretty respectable, what TCL was touting was its robust security and its own suite of business-oriented software like their Blackberry Hub, BBM and their Blackberry DTEK security that has appeared on their earlier devices, all of which all come preloaded on the phone. Keeping it running is a 3,505mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 support juiced by a USB Type-C port.

It’s an interested attempt to push what was once Blackberry’s most appealing feature in a market that has become used to the idea of punching out text on a touchscreen and it does have its uses. Even in this day and age, the tactility and feel of their keyboards is hard to match and the 3:2 aspect ratio of the screen without having a chunk of it taken up by a virtual keyboard means chunking out work and e-mails on the go is less of a chore. It costs US$549 (about MYR 2,438) for the privilege of owning one of these when they ship in April in the States though there’s no word on an official import to Malaysia yet though odds are you can probably snag it as a grey market import. For more details swing by here.