The future of the iconic smartphone brand ‘BlackBerry’ depends on the success of its latest launch ‘Blackberry KEYone’ aka Mercury. During the launch of the handset, the phone maker (i.e TCL Communication) claimed that the phone will be available across the globe as early as April. As the month begins to narrate its stories, Blackberry has certainly contributed one by delaying the phone’s release.
Earlier today, the company revealed its earnings for the past quarter. Surprisingly enough, it posted better-than-expected adjusted Q4 earnings which pleased the company’s investors. However, with the same earnings report, the company has disappointed its anxious KEYone customers. In the release, Company CEO John Chen noted that ‘KEYone’ is set to go into production toward the end of April with the full release being pushed to May of this year.
Announcing the delay, Chen said,
We just launched two phones, or we helped our partners launch two phones. One in Indonesia and that one is shipping already. 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.
Providing additional details, Steve Cistulli, President and GM of TCL Communication’s North American division has confirmed the delay on Twitter. He mentioned that the production of the phone is already underway. He even tweeted the release date for U.S and Canada — May 5th. He said that the company does not want to bungle the customers with stockouts and hence wants to make sure it has an appropriate stock before the phone is rolled out globally.
.@BBMobile Therefore the U.S. and Canadian KEYone launches will be in May 5/
— Steve Cistulli (@SteveCistulli) March 31, 2017
The BlackBerry KEYone is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 625 chipset, clocked at 2.0 GHz and coupled with a 64-bit Adreno 605 GPU. It includes 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage, which is expandable up to 2 TB using a microSD card. It also packs in a 3,505 mAh battery which supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 Technology and enables you to gain 50 percent charge in just about 30 minutes. You can find the full specifications of the right here.
