Last BlackBerry-designed phone with earthy keyboard to strike stores in April

Fans of BlackBerry’s classical earthy keyboard will have reason to applaud when a final product designed in partial by a former smartphone personality becomes accessible in April.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based organisation played a purpose in building a KEYone, named for a lapse of a QWERTY keyboard that other smartphone designers have mostly prolonged retired.

“BlackBerry did have something to contend about a industrial design,” pronounced Steve Cistulli, boss of a North American multiplication of TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd. (TCT).

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Cistulli pronounced TCT will make and sell a smartphone in Canada and several other countries as partial of a partnership with BlackBerry (TSX:BB).

The understanding allows a association to design, make and sell BlackBerry-branded smartphones that work regulating a record firm’s confidence software. BlackBerry receives a elect for any phone sold.

While a KEYone is a initial phone to strike a marketplace underneath this partnership, Cistulli indicated BlackBerry will no longer play a pattern purpose in any destiny products.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen pronounced final Sep a association was exiting a hardware business, that struggled with profitability as Apple and others dominated a market, to concentration on a flourishing confidence program operations.

TCL Communication’s CEO Nicolas Zibell presents a new BlackBerry KEYone before a Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)

The KEYone facilities a 4.5-inch touchscreen, fingerprint sensor and rear- and front-facing cameras. It comes with a microSD container that can extend a built-in memory by adult to dual terabytes and claims to be means to recharge adult to 50 per cent in about 36 minutes.

Cistulli could not yield an accurate cost for Canadians, though it will sell south of a limit for $549 US and he anticipates Canadians will expected compensate that and a sell rate — roughly $720.

The association expects it will be sole by many Canadian wireless carriers as good as online.

TCT will expected recover during slightest one some-more BlackBerry-branded phone this year, and will establish a rollout for a subsequent dual or 3 phones once it sees how a marketplace is doing, he said.

Cistulli would not divulge how many phones a association hopes to sell.

The association expects to design, make and sell some-more versions of phones with a earthy keyboard, as good as grow BlackBerry’s DTEK50 and DTEK60 touchscreen phone lines.

TCT denounced a KEYone during a Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/blackberry-keyboard-keyone-1.3999660?cmp=rss