The BlackBerry KEYone was announced back in February during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, and the company has just announced its availability in the UK. The BlackBerry KEYone is now available for purchase exclusively at London’s Selfridges department store on Oxford Road. Now, do keep in mind that this is a limited time sale, and it gives you a chance to get the phone a week earlier than anticipated, as the phone will be officially launched in the UK on May 5. The device will become available through Carphone Warehouse on a said date, but if you’d like to get one early, Selfridges department store on Oxford Road is the way to go.
That being said, if you’re interested in getting the BlackBerry KEYone now, you’ll need to splash out £499. “We are delighted to launch the BlackBerry KEYone first in the UK with Selfridges. Selfridges, voted world’s best department store three times consecutively have been a longtime supporter of BlackBerry,” said Johnathan Young, UK Country Manager for BlackBerry Mobile. Now, the BlackBerry KEYone is not a cheap smartphone, that’s for sure, £499 is a premium price point no matter what way you’re looking at it. That being said, the BlackBerry KEYone is well-specced, but it’s not exactly a high-end smartphone, at least not in the spec department, as it comes with the Snapdragon 625 64-bit octa-core processor, which is Qualcomm’s mid-range chip. The BlackBerry KEYone is, however, a rather unique smartphone, as it has a full QWERTY physical keyboard, while its design is rather interesting as well. You won’t find that many Android-powered smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards out there, aside from the BlackBerry Priv and now the BlackBerry KEYone, only some older phones offer such a feature.
The BlackBerry KEYone features a 4.5-inch 1620 x 1080 display, along with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable internal storage. A 12-megapixel shooter is placed on the back of the BlackBerry KEYone, and an 8-megapixel snapper can be found on the device’s front side. Android 7.1 Nougat comes pre-installed on the device, and on top of it, you’ll get some of BlackBerry’s apps and services. A non-removable 3,505mAh battery is also included in this package, and so is Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging. If you’d like to know more about the device, click here.