BlackBerry’s latest smartphone has finally launched in the UK, although it’s not easy to get your hands on one.
The BlackBerry KeyOne is now available to purchase in the UK, although stock is limited to just one retailer initially. If you want to buy one, you’ll need to head down to the flagship Selfridges store on Oxford Street in London.
The good news is that the phone will eventually be available to buy elsewhere, with Carphone Warehouse confirmed to be stocking the phone as soon as May 5, 2017.
“We want to congratulate BlackBerry Mobile on the UK launch of the BlackBerry KeyOne,” said Bosse Myhr, Selfridges Director of Technology, Home and Menswear. “We are thrilled to be the first UK retailer to offer customers the BlackBerry KeyOne at our flagship Oxford Street store and provide them with a premium smartphone that aligns with their unique and discerning style."
BlackBerry announced the KeyOne at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress in February this year, revealing a handset long teased under the codename ‘Mercury’.
The KeyOne is the fourth BlackBerry handset that doesn’t run on BlackBerry’s own operating system, instead opting for Google’s Android. It’s also manufactured by a third-party company called TCL, who also handled marketing and distribution for the phone. Importantly, the KeyOne is the last smartphone to be designed by BlackBerry.
The Blackberry KeyOne features a 4.5-inch LCD screen with a Full HD display resolution, giving an overall pixel density of 433ppi. The handset runs on Qualcomm’s mid-tier Snapdragon 635 processor, and comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
There’s a 12-megapixel camera on the back with dual-tone flash and a wide f/2.0 aperture, while an 8-megapixel front camera handles selfies. The handset also comes with BlackBerry’s trademark built-in QWERTY keyboard; in this case, it’s a capacitive four-row keypad.
You can pick up the BlackBerry KeyOne in the UK for £499.
