After leaking out briefly this past week, the BlackBerry Motion is now official. BlackBerry Mobile debuted its latest device at GITEX Tech Week in Dubai. This is TCL’s second smartphone made specifically for BlackBerry Mobile, and it is TCL’s first all-touch smartphone for the company. Unlike the KEYone which was unveiled earlier this year to much fanfare, the Motion does not have a physical keyboard. Instead it has a physical home button, which is also doubling as the fingerprint sensor (and for what it’s worth, it has a BlackBerry logo on it).
Not a whole lot is known about the specs yet, as BlackBerry Mobile has not put out a full press release with a spec sheet just yet. But we do know that it sports a 5.5-inch 1920×1080 resolution display, and is powered by the Snapdragon 625 processor. That is paired with 4GB of RAM and likely 32GB of storage, although the storage is not yet confirmed. It is coming with Android 7.1 Nougat pre-installed, but BlackBerry Mobile will update it to Android 8.0 Oreo in 2018, although there is no specific date or time frame for that update just yet. It does have a massive 4000mAh battery, which can be charged to 50% in 40 minutes with Quick Charge 3.0. Finally, it does have IP67 water-resistance. So it isn’t quite waterproof, but you can take in the shower with you, if you want to do so.
Since BlackBerry Mobile did unveil the Motion in Dubai today, it’s no surprise that it’ll be launching in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia first, it’ll be available later this month. With a price of Dh1,699 in the UAE (that’s around $463 USD). Over in Saudi Arabia, it’ll cost 1,699 Riyal. BlackBerry Mobile did not that it will be coming to “select global markets” later this month, but did not mention which specific markets those would be. Expect BlackBerry Mobile and TCL to talk more about the Motion later this week, now that the device is actually official. It does appear that this might be a smartphone destined for the Middle East and Africa though, but many in the US would love to have this phone available to them.
