OnwardMobility and Foxconn are making a new BlackBerry for a possible 2021 release; here’s what we know so far
The Blackberry 5G may soon fill the void felt by Android power users who love the idea of physical keyboards for faster typing. It’s been far too long since these people have had their fingertips tapping away at the keys of something like the niche and rather average BlackBerry Key2 – launched in 2018 – or even more obscure and middling F(x)tec Pro 1 – launched a year later. You’d be hard-pressed to find a keyboard phone that isn’t obsolete today. Thankfully for folks pining nostalgically for BlackBerry’s glory days, we will allegedly see a new BlackBerry phone with 5G connectivity sometime in 2021. It won’t be made by the original BlackBerry devs, who are selling their mobile patents away and have mostly left smartphones behind in favor of smart car software and security tech. Nor by TCL, which took over the brand’s manufacturing in 2016 but dropped the partnership in 2020. Instead, new mobile company OnwardMobility purchased the brand, and plans to work with Foxconn – maker of most gaming consoles, Nokia and Xiaomi phones, and some old BlackBerry models – to make a new BlackBerry. Here’s everything we expect to see from this new phone, in terms of specs and features. When OnwardMobility licensed the BlackBerry brand, it announced in mid-2020 that it would release a new phone in North American and European markets sometime in the first half of 2021. It may also ship in Asian markets, but likely at a later date. More recently, OnwardMobility CEO Peter Franklin said in a February interview with Nikkei Asia that ‘more details will be announced within the next few months.’ That could mean a product reveal as soon as May 2021; however, a product release by June may no longer be in the cards, based on the current timeline. We don’t have a price estimate yet. The last BlackBerry flagship with a keyboard, the Key2, cost $649 / £579 (about AU$850), with most of its Android predecessors falling into the same mid-range pricing range.
