Blackberry: The Latest and the Company's Future

DTEK50

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A couple of months ago, the company unveiled the Dtek50, a mid-range phone that was recently released. It's packed with Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 and an Adreno 405 GPU. The display comes with an IPS LCD 5.2-inch capacitive touchscreen and a 424 ppi pixel density. The primary camera has 13 megapixels; the front-facing one, 8 megapixels. The phone gives you 16GB internal storage, although you can add up to 256MB using a microSD card, and runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

This could be the breakthrough that Blackberry was looking for after  disappointing sales that came from their first phone, the Priv, that runs on Android, and released a year ago.
But what everyone was asking is, can the Dtek50 compete with all the mid-rangers out there at a starting price of $ 329 in the US and $429 in Canada? The company said it is the most secure Android smartphone out there.

DTEK60

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Rumour has it that the company accidentally leaked the details of Blackberry's  upcoming phone, the Dtek60.






The specifications are:
DISPLAY: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 5.5 inches and a resolution of 1440 x 2560 (~534 ppi pixel density)
CAMERA:
Primary - 21 MP with dual Led Flash
Secondary - 8 MP
CHIPSET: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820
MEMORY: Internal - 32 GB, 4GB of RAM
Runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow

It has a non-removable 3000 mAh battery and a fingerprint scanner.

With these high-end specifications, we can say that the Dtek60 should be able to compete with the likes of iPhone 7 and Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 and probably boost the company's sales.

Blackberry to Stop making phones?

The company was once a market leader, but struggled to keep pace with rivals Apple and Samsung. And after 14 years of making modern handsets, Blackberry is calling it quits on its phone business.
In 2015, the company decided to ditch its own Blackberry OS and go with Android, which it used on the Blackberry Priv to catch up with competition. Sadly, the quota to sell 500 million phones was not met. But even when the quota dropped to 300 million, Blackberry never came close.

The Canadian company said it's going to focus on making software and will outsource the manufacture of hardware to other firms.

John Chen, Blackberry CEO, said: "We are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The  company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital."
Earlier this year, Chen said that he would know by September whether the loss-making handset business was likely to become profitable.

The company has not yet confirmed when any further Blackberry phones will be released but Mr. Chen said that at least devices with the iconic physical keyboard would go on sale. " I always wanted to make sure that we keep having the iconic devices." Mr. Chen told the media.


Sources: BBC, The Guardian