If there’s one thing BlackBerry is known for, its the keyboards on its mobile devices. There was a time when BlackBerry smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards ruled the world, but then trends changed and the company didn’t evolve with them, so it ended up losing significant market share. Nevertheless, there are diehard BB users out there who would prefer a Q10 over a Z10 any given day, most of them would never want the company to completely give up on QWERTY keyboards. While that might not happen anytime soon, it appears that BB’s latest plan to kickstart the success of its hardware business might make use of fewer physical keys.
The company recently announced that it has teamed up with Foxconn to develop low-end devices geared towards emerging markets, where BB still enjoys popularity and where its keyboards are one of the biggest selling point. BGR claims to have heard that the first device to come out of this agreement, codenamed Jakarta, won’t have a physical keyboard. Instead it is said to tout a full touchscreen and run on BlackBerry 10 OS, which could mean that the Canadian manufacturer might finally be phasing out OS7. No additional details have been leaked about this device, perhaps we might hear more over the coming weeks. BlackBerry will continue to manufacture high-end devices, and its highly likely that one of them will definitely have a full QWERTY keyboard.
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