BlackBerry Motion, All Touchscreen Phone With Giant Battery Announced

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Pictures of the BlackBerry Motion smartphone were leaked just last week, and now, the company has officially announced the smartphone at GITEX technology week in Dubai. It would not be wrong to say that the handset is quite similar to the KEYone except for the keypad.

An all touch-screen smartphone, BlackBerry Motion packs a Snapdragon 625 chip, 4GB RAM, 32GB of storage and a 12-megapixel rear camera. The screen of the phone is 5.5-inches with a 1080pp display. As has been hinted by the rumors, the Motion is IP67 water resistant and the battery power is 4,000mAh. The battery power hints that the phone can run for a day on full-charge.

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Francois Mahieu, deputy president and general manager for global sales and regional marketing at BlackBerry, said the positioning of the Motion is right because not all enterprises want a phone that surpasses $1000. Further, according to Mahieu, the battery life has been a major focus while making Motion, because the company wanted to make a ‘real life’ smartphone.

When asked about skipping the dual camera feature, the hottest selling point right now, Gareth Hurn, global head of device portfolio at BlackBerry, told Khaleej Times that although there was a debate over this feature, for now, the company has decided to live with a single camera and focus on more important features.

The BlackBerry Motion smartphone, like its predecessor, will run on customized Android 7.1. Further, there has not been any compromise on the security-focused apps with Motion also embedded with some high-end business and privacy-friendly security features.

Alain Lejeune, Global General Manager for BlackBerry, said that the Motion would add to the diversification of the product line, offering a new experience and delivering high on the privacy, reliability and productivity for which the company is known for, according to FirstPost. “While the initial launch of our newest BlackBerry smartphone will be limited, this is an exciting addition to our growing BlackBerry smartphone portfolio, setting a strong foundation for further portfolio and market growth in the years to come,” Lejeune said.

The BlackBerry Motion smartphone would first be available in a few Middle Eastern markets including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Price point for the smartphone has been kept around $460. For now, North America is not on the list, but eventually the handset would come to the U.S., probably on Sprint.

BlackBerry has made a major comeback, thanks to software sales. For the recent quarter, the Canadian firm posted a net income of $19 million, following a loss of $372 million last year. According to Ali Mogharabi, the Morningstar analyst, there are some exciting growth opportunities for BlackBerry as the company is betting on the self-driving cars technology, notes The Guardian. A couple of weeks back, BlackBerry entered a deal with car parts supplier Delphi Automotive on a software operating system for self-driving cars.

BlackBerry is finally reaping profit from its software unit. However, talking of the hardware sales, its last few phones have been received well, and now the company is coming up with the Motion. It will be interesting to watch how the company portrays itself, if the upcoming handset gets a good response as well.

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