Why it matters to you
Just because BlackBerry isn’t making its own phones anymore doesn’t mean there aren’t more BlackBerrys coming to market. The latest is the Aurora.
BlackBerry isn’t making its trademark handsets anymore, but that certainly doesn’t mean the end of BlackBerry phones. When the device manufacturer announced last year that it would no longer be producing its own hardware, it also began licensing the BlackBerry brand to other companies, including BB Merah Putih, an Indonesian manufacturer that has just debuted its very first BlackBerry — the Aurora.
Available only in Indonesia (it’s said to be “made in Indonesia, for Indonesians”), the Aurora is one of the first new BlackBerry phones to hit the market. It’s not quite the first, however — TCL unveiled the KEYone last month at Mobile World Congress to great fanfare.
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But regardless of bragging rights, the Aurora comes with some pretty decent specs that certainly ought to please the Indonesian market. The 5.5-inch screen boasts a 1,280 x 720 resolution and scratch-resistant glass, and the phone is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor with Adreno 308 GPU. Memory-wise, the phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage, plus a MicroSD card that supports up to 2TB.
The Aurora has a 13MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus, LED flash, dual-tone CMOS sensor, and 1080p video recording, and an 8MP front-facing camera with LED flash. The 3000mAh Li-ion battery should keep the handset charged for a fair amount of time, and of course, the phone comes with all your other standard features like 4G LTE connectivity, dual-SIM cards support, a MicroUSB 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The phone will ship with Android 7.0 Nougat, and you can choose from black, silver, or gold color variants. Indonesians will be asked to pay 3,499,000 rupees, the equivalent of about $260.
You can pre-order the phone from the company’s website, and those early adopters will also receive a free JBL Go speaker and a smart flip case.