Middle Eastern mobile retailer Axiom Telecom is launching a special edition of the BlackBerry KEYone featuring a gold-plated metal frame. The device is currently available for pre-order at the price of AED 2,999 which is the equivalent of $816 at today’s conversion rate, and it will be available starting August 20.
Spec-wise, Axiom Telecom’s special edition BlackBerry KEYone offers the same characteristics as the standard model, including a 4.5-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1620 x 1080, covered in a protective sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass 4. The handset is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 system-on-chip (SoC) housing eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at up to 2.0GHz and the Adreno 506 graphics chip. The device comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of on-board memory expandable via s microSD card by up to an additional 256GB, and in the media department, the KEYone is equipped with a 12-megapixel main camera featuring phase detection autofocus (PDAF), an f/2.0 aperture, and a dual-LED flash, as well as an 8-megapixel front-facing sensor with an f/2.2 aperture and 1080p video recording capabilities. Lastly, the BlackBerry KEYone supports Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac connectivity, features both a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a USB Type-C connector, and is powered by a non-removable 3,505mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 capabilities.
Evidently, what sets this particular device apart from most other Android smartphones is the fact that it accommodates a full QWERTY physical keyboard which doubles as a track pad, and conceals a fingerprint scanner with swiping gestures embedded right into the spacebar. The smartphone runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box and the operating system has been enriched by several BlackBerry features including the DTEK application for additional security and a password manager called the Password Keeper. These unique characteristics alone represent a taste of exclusivity in today’s smartphone world, however, prospective buyers looking for a bit of exclusivity even amongst other BlackBerry KEYone owners might find Axiom Telecom’s gold-plated special edition variant of the phone to be the right choice. The retailer also offers the regular KEYone for the price of AED 1,999 ($544), while the gold-plated variant tops the standard model’s price by an additional AED 1,000 ($272).