BlackBerry is looking to return to the smartphone market with a 5G phone with a physical keyboard. Once the king of QWERTY smartphones. BlackBerry is set to return to European and North American markets.
Blackberry has made a new deal with OnwardMobility and allowed it to use its name and intellectual property for new keyboarded Android smartphones. FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn, will be manufacturing the handsets.
We do not have many details, but the teaser photo has confirmed that the phone will come with 5G.
Onward Mobility says these new phones will be “highly secure” and will offer a “suite of end-to-end security solutions.”
“BlackBerry is thrilled OnwardMobility will deliver a BlackBerry 5G smartphone device with a physical keyboard leveraging our high standards of trust and security synonymous with our brand. We are excited that customers will experience the enterprise and government level security and mobile productivity the new BlackBerry 5G smartphone will offer,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO, BlackBerry.
BlackBerry stopped working on phones back in 2016 and allowed TCL to manufacture and sell BlackBerry-branded devices. This deal ended earlier this year and BlackBerry announced to shut down sales of Android phones starting August 31, 2020. But this new partnership has made sure that the BlackBerry brand won’t go away anytime soon.