We’ve known since late last year that TCL has developed a BlackBerry-branded smartphone that runs Android and features a full QWERTY keyboard. This handset was officially announced a couple of months back and now the company has finally confirmed when it’s going to be released in the United States. TCL first unveiled the BlackBerry KEYOne properly at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in February this year.
You might have already heard that BlackBerry is no longer making its own smartphones. It has selected TCL as its global licensing partner which means that TCL is now going to develop and sell BlackBerry-branded handsets. The KEYOne is a result of this partnership.
The BlackBerry KEYOne features a 4.5-inch 1620×1080 pixel resolution display, it has a Snapdragon 625 processor under the hood coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
The handset also has a 12 megapixel rear and 8 megapixel front camera, a 3,505mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0, USB Type-C port, a fingerprint sensor embedded in the space key, NFC, and it runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box.
TCL has confirmed today that the KEYOne is going to be released in the United States starting May 31st. It will be available to purchase unlocked and off-contract for $549.