BlackBerry 5G phone with retro keyboard launching in 2021

Former mobile pioneer BlackBerry in collaboration with US startup Onward Mobility and FIH Mobile Limited, a subsidiary of Foxconn, is all geared up to make another comeback.

Peter Franklin, CEO, Onward Mobility in an interview with Nikkei Asia has confirmed that the company is planning to bring a 5G BlackBerry phone in 2021. Initially, it will be released in Europe and North America in the first half of the year. And, it will be rolled out in Asia in the second half.

The upcoming 5G BlackBerry phone is said to come with a classical physical keyboard. It is expected to run Android OS and offer security enterprise-level security for communication (calls and messaging), which the BlackBerry brand is long known for.

However, it remains to be how the consumers will react to the new phone.

Since the advent of the Apple iPhone and Android, BlackBerry has never been able to recover the lost ground in the 2010s. A few laters later, it joined hands with China-based TCL and launched a number of Z-series touch-screen mobiles and retro phones with physical keyboards. But, it failed to elicit any good response from consumers even from corporate.

Now, with personal privacy becoming a hot topic among phone users, Apple is the new champion. BlackBerry can leverage its 'end-to-end security' solution, which was offered on BlackBerry Messenger long before WhatsApp and other rivals.

BlackBerry can incorporate the latest cybersecurity tools into its phone and offer good competition to dominant players such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and Oppo among others.

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