Tech enthusiasts who are waiting for the release of BlackBerry KEYone were disappointed once hearing the news that the company will push its launch on a later date. The device has been expected to come this month, but Blackberry announced that it will arrive in May instead.
"We just launched two phones, or we helped our partners launch two phones. One in Indonesia and that one is shipping already," said CEO John Chen during the earnings call of the company.
"The second one that TCL announced at Mobile World Congress which is the physical keyboard on an Android, that one is not going to be slated to ship until probably the May timeframe. I think the first manufacturing production run is at the end of April. So the product looks pretty good, but the worldwide availability is going to be later than May," he added.
TCL North America President and General Manager, Steve Cistulli, took to Twitter to explain that there was an "overwhelmingly positive" response to the device's announcement, so the demand for the device has exceeded the initial supply produced by the manufacturer.
.@BBMobile Response to our global unveiling of KEYone has been overwhelmingly positive, and we're very humbled by this excitement 2/
— Steve Cistulli (@SteveCistulli) March 31, 2017 " data-caption="null" data-credit="Twitter/ Steve Cistulli">The handset will come with a 4.5-inch full high-definition display with 433ppi pixel density. It is coupled with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 and will run using the Snapdragon 625 Octa-Core SoC. It will also have 3 GB of RAM under the hood, an Adreno 506 GPU, a 12-megapixel rear camera, and an 8-megapixel front one.
For its internal storage, it will be installed with 32 GB of space, but this can be expanded to a whopping 2 TB of free space. Aside from this, the handset is said to be packed with a 3505 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 technology. This will promise to get 50 percent battery power in just 36 minutes. The Android 7.1 Nougat operating system will also be installed on the device right out of the box.
The release schedule is set in May, although the company has yet to announce the specific date. When it comes out, the BlacBerry KEYone will be retailed at around $549.
