TCL's Next BlackBerry Smartphone Will Ditch The Keyboard, Will Be Water Resistant

TCL is in attendance at IFA 2017 in Berlin, Germany and confirmed that a new BlackBerry smartphone is on the way. The upcoming BlackBerry smartphone will arrive in October and has been described as a companion to the KeyOne.

“Two months from now, we will have a touchscreen solution to show,” head of global sales for TCL François Mahieu said, according to CNET. The major difference between the new smartphone and the KeyOne is that the new BlackBerry handset will ditch the physical QWERTY keyboard in favor of an all-touchscreen design.

Back in February, TCL did confirm that it was going to release at least two more smartphones in 2017 after the BlackBerry KeyOne. However, this is the very first time that the Chinese company has confirmed an October release date for one of its upcoming new devices.

TCL, the Chinese company that currently owns the BlackBerry brand, is also known for making televisions and Alcatel smartphones. Although it may seem odd that the company will be making a new all-touchscreen smartphone after the success of the KeyOne, it isn’t really all too surprising.

TCL’s first attempt at an Android Blackberry smartphone was 2016’s DTEK50, which was seen by many as a rebranded version of the Alcatel Idol 4. The DTEK50 featured an all-touchscreen design, and it was followed by a successor with the DTEK60 (rebranded Idol 4S) later that same year. Although the BlackBerry DTEK series wasn’t a huge success, it does show that TCL already has the know-how to produce an all-touchscreen Android BlackBerry smartphone.

No details on specs were given for the upcoming BlackBerry device, but TCL did confirm that it’s planning for the new handset to be IP67 water and dust resistant with more than 26 hours of battery life, according to Engadget. If this pans out, the upcoming all-touchscreen device will be the first BlackBerry device to feature any sort of water resistance.

IBT reported back in June information on an upcoming BlackBerry smartphone that features a 5.2-inch 1080p display and powered by a Snapdragon 625 chip. The SD625 chipset is also the same one that's powering the KeyOne, so it's very likely that this is what TCL is currently teasing.

Mahieu says that the new touchscreen BlackBerry smartphone that’s arriving this October will be sold around the same price as the KeyOne. Like the KeyOne, TCL is once again targeting business users. The idea behind this is that TCL wants to offer its business consumers a choice between two different devices, hence why the new phone is considered to be a companion of the KeyOne.

Although the BlackBerry brand has always been known for its signature physical QWERTY keyboard, there are still those who’ve already moved on to using all-touchscreen devices. “We should not be blind to the demand that’s out there,” Mahieu said.

The current smartphone trend right now is making bezels incredibly thin, while making devices appear to have an all-screen design. Xiaomi's Mi Mix from last years is seen as the precursor of the trend, while the LG G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8 Plus made it more popular. Apple’s iPhone 8 is expected to be announced next month, and if recent rumors and leaks are accurate, it will soon follow suite.

TCL didn’t confirm if its next BlackBerry phone will follow the trend, but it did say that it’s not completely ditching the physical QWERTY keyboard for its future products. “It will continue to be true in the future that keyboards are definitely a big element of [BlackBerry’s] DNA,” said Mahieu.