BlackBerry’s second-generation Android smartphone, the DTEK50, was officially announced on July 26. Following on the heels of the high-end BlackBerry Priv, the DTEK50 is more a mid-range device – touted as the “World’s Most Secure Android Smartphone.” We knew that the DTEK50 would be for sale in Canada – in fact, you could pick one up over the past two weeks in the ShopBlackBerry store for $429 unlocked. BlackBerry claimed the DTEK50 would be available from the carriers, in the coming weeks. Which includes Rogers, Bell, Telus, Wind Mobile, Videotron, and SaskTel. It looks like Wind Mobile beat the other carriers in announcing the BlackBerry DTEK50 on their website as “Coming Soon.” That is about as vague as you can get – no pricing and no estimated date of availability, but we will keep watching for changes at their website.
This secure BlackBerry DTEK50 – which is how BlackBerry is marketing the device – sports a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display with an FHD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and 424 pixels-per-inch (PPI.) The display features scratch-resistant glass with an oleophobic coating to repel fingerprints. The processor BlackBerry chose is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor with one quad clocked at 1.2GHz and another quad-core clocked at 1.5GHz coupled with an Adreno 405 GPU to handle the graphics. It packs 3GB of DDR3 RAM (limitation of the processor) and 16GB of expandable storage via a microSD card – all the way up to a theoretical 2TB.
BlackBerry was never much into cameras, but the DTEK50 uses a respectable 13MP sensor with a six-element lens, an aperture of f/2.0, dual-tone LED flash, phase detection autofocus, and the ability to record 1080p HD videos at 30 frames-per-second. BlackBerry also incorporated a large 8MP front-facing camera, with a f/2.2 aperture, wide-angle and even a selfie flash to take great selfies and video chats even in low light. It uses a 2610mAh battery with Quick Charge 2.0 to power the DTEK50. It has the usual suspects – WiFi, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS, NFC, and a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data transfer.
The BlackBerry DTEK50 is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but there is no fingerprint sensor to authorize mobile payments – however, with NFC technology, you can still use Tap and Pay, Tap and Go, and Android Beam.