BlackBerry Mobile launched the BlackBerry KEY2 phone in India on Monday at a price of Rs 42,990. This is the same KEY2 that was announced by TCL in June, the only difference is that in India the device is being manufactured by homegrown brand Optiemus Infracom. Only the 64GB black version of the KEY2 will be made available in India and Optiemus will be selling it through Amazon India.
Now, if the original KEYone wowed you with its one-of-its-kind nostalgic physical QWERTY and BlackBerry’s push for a safe and secure software ecosystem, the KEY2 will literally blow your minds with everything that’s in store. That’s also why the BlackBerry KEY2 is more expensive than last year’s KEYone.
The KEY2 looks exactly like the KEYone, although a few changes that have been brought in, this year, should help improve ergonomics and hand-hold feel. This includes a more compact chassis and a re-positioned convenience key, that’s now located on the right along with the power and volume rocker.
The USP of the KEY2 still remains to be its full-scale physical QWERTY that lies in continuation with the touchscreen. The QWERTY still supports touch-gestures like scrolling and Flick Typing for predictive texting, as also 52 app shortcuts via the short and long press. The space bar still doubles as a fingerprint scanner. Only this time, the keys are up to 20 per cent larger so they should feel less cramped than the ones on-board the KEYone. BlackBerry is also introducing a new Speed Key that lets you use custom shortcuts from anywhere on the screen. On the KEYone, you could use them only from the home screen.
BlackBerry KEY2: Specs and features
The BlackBerry KEY2 comes with a 4.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD screen with an unusual aspect ratio of 3:2. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor with 6GB RAM. The phone comes with 64B of internal storage which is further expandable by up to 256GB via a micro-SD card slot. The phone is backed by a 3,500mAh battery with support for Quick Charge 3.0 over USB Type-C.
The KEY2 runs Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box with BlackBerry’s usual suite of security and productivity applications: meaning that it’s also being pitched as the most secure Android smartphone in the world. The phone has “device security built in from the start,” according to the company, with tools like hardware root of trust and a secure bootloader, quite literally encrypting the phone to the T.
Moving on, the KEY2 comes with a dual rear camera system consisting of one 12-megapixel camera (f/1.8 aperture) and a secondary 12-megapixel camera (f/2.6 aperture) for depth sensing and up to 2X optical zoom. There’s a dual tone LED flash and support for 4K video recording. On the front, the KEY2 comes with an 8-megapixel camera.
BlackBerry KEY2: Price and availability
The BlackBerry KEY2 will be available for buying for Rs 42,990 from July 31 exclusively via Amazon India.
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