A new leak that is circulating on the Chinese social media site Weibo claims that the successor to the BlackBerry KEYone will be named as the BlackBerry KEY2. The name of the upcoming smartphone was discovered after a photograph taken by the rear camera of the device produced an image that contains the logo of the tech firm and the word “KEY2”, which is the likely name of the rumored handset.
Aside from the name of the smartphone, the leak also included an image of the front panel of the device. The front of the smartphone looks similar to a device that was recently certified by the Chinese telecommunications regulator TENAA. This device, which is believed to be the successor to the BlackBerry KEYone, is identified by the model number BBF100-4, and it also has the code name “Athena”. Based on both the recently leaked image and the photographs released by the regulator, the BlackBerry KEY2 will still retain the physical keyboard of its predecessor, although it seems that the device will sport a display with an aspect ratio longer than 3:2. In addition, the images included with the smartphone’s listing on the TENAA website shows that the upcoming handset will include a dual rear camera setup, which is placed near the upper left corner of the device’s back. Device renders that were leaked earlier this month also shows that the upcoming device retains the “convenience key”, which is a hardware button that users could map to open applications or perform certain actions, while the 3.5mm headphone jack is placed on the top of the handset. The bottom of the device, on the other hand, contains the USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill.
Reports claim that BlackBerry KEY2 will be powered by the Snapdragon 660 chipset from the semiconductor firm Qualcomm. This SoC is comprised of an octa-core Kryo 260 CPU and the Adreno 512 GPU. In contrast, the BlackBerry KEYone is powered by the Snapdragon 625 chipset. In addition, reports mention that the upcoming handset will contain 6GB of RAM and that the device will ship with Android Oreo pre-installed. The BlackBerry KEY2 is expected to be launched in June.
