BlackBerry’s partner OEM in Indonesia, BB Merah Putih, is using its licensing agreement with the former smartphone giant to come up with a new mid-range smartphone, Blackberry Aurora.
Indonesia is one of the few countries where Blackberry still has sway, which could give its licensing partner a shot at success. The Aurora has the distinction of being the first BlackBerry phone ever to come with dual-SIM support.
The phone comes with a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display on the front, above which is an 8 MP camera with an LED flash. At the back is a 13 MP camera with PDAF and a dual-LED flash. The phone itself is 8.5mm thick and tips the scales at 178 grams.
Under the hood, the phone comes with the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor clocked at 1.4 GHz. It features 4 GB RAM and 32 GB storage. A microSD card slot lets you expand the storage up to 256 GB.
The OS running on the phone is Android 7.0 Nougat, while all the normal connectivity whizzes are onboard. It will come with the standard Blackberry suite of apps like the Blackberry Hub and others.
The phone will be available in Black, Silver and Gold. The battery capacity is 3000 mAh. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem the phone will have a fingerprint scanner. It also features the dated microUSB slot for charging and connectivity purposes.
The pricing of the phone is set at $260, which will make it a decent offering for BlackBerry fans, even if the iconic keyboard is missing.