On a drip for many years, BlackBerry found another rescuer after TCL was abandoned. The Texan company OnwardMobility is teaming up with a division of Foxconn to restore the iconic brand to its reputation with a new 5G smartphone scheduled for release in 2021. And yes, it will be equipped with a keyboard!
You thought BlackBerry missing? Think again ! The iconic brand should return to the race next year, thanks to a new Texan buyer by the name of OnwardMobility, who announces that he wants to launch a new 5G smartphone stamped BlackBerry in 2021. It would be equipped with 5G, and would take the iconic phone keypad of yesteryear in order to “Reflect the values of the brand”. The smartphone would be well launched in our countries, and should run on Android, but no other details have been outlined by OnwardMobility, except that the company will partner with FIH Mobile Limited – a division of the giant Foxconn – to ensure production.
A historic fall
We remember the vertiginous fall of BlackBerry, yet promised a bright future after becoming one of the most popular telephone brands of the 2000s. With the arrival of the first iPhone and then Android smartphones, the firm has little to little gave way to competition with touch screens, until the radar almost completely disappeared. The Chinese giant TCL had nevertheless tried to revive it from its ashes by recovering the license in 2016. However, after some timid attempts to modernize the brand, TCL ended up announcing the abandonment of the license in early February, a decision that will take effect on August 31.
— BlackBerry Mobile (@BBMobile) February 3, 2020
It remains to be seen whether a smartphone with a physical keyboard could prevail again these days. We must admit that the trend is clearly not in this direction, but rather on the side of devices with ever larger screens and without edges or even hybrids with foldable screens. The Texan company which took over the brand nevertheless seems to want to orient its future device towards a more target « business », which was already the original BlackBerry audience at its peak. To do this, BlackBerry will be able to count on its physical keyboards as well as security standards. “Government”. We are impatiently waiting to see what this first device will look like, and if it will be able to restore the image of the brand.
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Blackberry 9720 Smartphone …
- 5 MP, 2592×1944 pixels, LED flash, geo-tagging, image stabilization, video
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
- Document Viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF
- Radio FM Stereo con RDS
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