Friday, March 29, 2024

Here’s everything we know about the Blackberry KeyTwo

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Simon Hill/Digital Trends

Blackberry might be at its best when it sticks to what it knows best — security-concious phones with QWERTY keyboards. The Blackberry KeyOne was a return to form for the company, which had otherwise had a quiet few years, so it makes sense that Blackberry would be planning a sequel to its keyboarded wonder. Here’s everything we know so far about the Blackberry KeyTwo.

Design

Current leaks suggest that little has changed between the KeyOne and the KeyTwo in terms of design. Some parts of the design have been tightened up, the top bezel that we weren’t keen on in the KeyOne has been shrunk and made less prominent, and the screen now has a gentle curve. However, little else has changed. That’s not a bad thing; the KeyOne had a unique look, and we like the idea that Blackberry might keep the same sort of style as its predecessors.

Slashleaks

The renders show the QWERTY keyboard at the bottom of the phone, and it seems that the fingerprint scanning space bar has returned. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top (yes!), and a USB-C connection at the bottom. Renders of the back show a dual-camera system — Blackberry’s first — as well as the rubberized back panel we saw on the KeyOne. These renders seem like fairly safe bets, and we’re willing to bet they’re probably not far off the final design.

Specs

Blackberry’s phones have traditionally been lower-powered than most of the competition and the current rumors about the KeyTwo suggest that won’t be changing. According to TechGenYZ, the KeyTwo will come with the lower-powered Snapdragon 660 (compared to the latest Snapdragon 845 we expect to see in most 2018 flagships), but will be paired with either 6 or 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of onboard storage. The large amount of RAM should assist the phone in handling multiple tasks at the same time — which meets expectations for a phone intended for enterprise users.

With this being 2018, we fully expect that the phone will launch with Android 8.0 Oreo, but it’s possible that the KeyTwo could launch with Android 7.0 Nougat and a promise of updates. No other Blackberry phone has received the Oreo update, making it possible that Blackberry simply hasn’t caught up yet.

Name

There’s been no official confirmation of the name of Blackberry’s next flagship phone, but there are plenty of rumors surrounding the phone bearing the code name “Athena.” The choice of code name is an interesting one; Athena was the Greek goddess of warfare, wisdom, and handicrafts. Is Blackberry suggesting it’s choosing a wise battlefield with the QWERTY keyboard phone, and intimating the KeyTwo will have a high build quality? Crafty, Blackberry, but we see through you.

Given the look of the designs and renders we’ve seen, we’re taking this to basically be the follow-up to the KeyOne, and assumed it’ll be called the KeyTwo. There are some whispers that it will be styled as the “Key 2,” but we’re not confident enough in that to put our money on it.

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