One of BlackBerry’s biggest USPs is the much-vaunted security, which the company promised will not be compromised when it jumped ship from BB OS to Android earlier this year with the launch of its first-ever Android-powered smartphone, the BlackBerry Priv. In keeping with its promise, the Canadian smartphone vendor is now apparently rolling out the January security updates to the Priv, if a post on Twitter by self-proclaimed BlackBerry geek and science fiction enthusiast, Michael Clewley, is anything to go by. The tweet claims that the unlocked version of the device, as well as some carrier-locked models, have already started getting the update in the US as of Monday, while some of the other carriers will start rolling out the new software next week.
Coming to the security patch that is being rolled out to BlackBerry’s latest flagship smartphone, the update comes with software version AAD250, but in the absence of an official changelog, it isn’t immediately clear what the update brings about or which vulnerabilities are addressed by the new code. While Priv users should start getting the OTA update notifications on their handsets soon enough, those who simply cannot wait to install the latest security patches can check for the availability of the update by heading over to Settings > About Phone > Software Update. While not all versions of the phone have started receiving their updates just as yet, it probably shouldn’t take too long, given BlackBerry’s penchant for security and its fairly large corporate user base.
Taking a quick look at the BlackBerry Priv, it is, of course, the very first Android-powered smartphone from the Canadian smartphone vendor formerly known as Research in Motion. The device was launched earlier this year, and by all accounts, has been fairly well-received by both the tech media as well as paying consumers at large. The handset comes with a sliding physical QWERTY keyboard, and features a 5.4-inch AMOLED display, with a QHD resolution (2560 x 1440). The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC and sports 3 GB of RAM along with 32 GB of storage. While the rear-facing primary camera on the Priv is an 18-megapixel unit, the front-facing selfie-cam comes with a 2-megapixel sensor. The smartphone comes with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box and carries a 3,410 mAh Li-ion battery.