At GITEX Technology Week in Dubai, TCL unveiled the BlackBerry Motion. It has a 5.5in touchscreen, a Snapdragon 625 processor and a notably large 4,000mAh battery.
The phone is not dissimilar to the KeyOne, TCL’s last BlackBerry that sported a physical keyboard underneath its touchscreen. The Motion attempts to continue the touchscreen legacy of the DTEK50 and DTEK60 of 2016 and reassert the BlackBerry brand in the Android space.
When is it coming out?
The Motion is widely available globally as of February 2018. It’s available in major markets including US, UK, and many other European regions from local operators and directly from TCL.
How much will it cost?
The BlackBerry Motion is available at John Lewis for £399, £100 less than the KeyOne.
BlackBerry Motion features and specifications
The BlackBerry Motion eschews the physical keyboard in favour of a 5.5in IPS LCD touchscreen. It’s also the first BB branded phone ever to feature IP67 water and dust resistance, a welcome feature in a £399 phone.
Its design recalls the older BB10 running Z10 more than it does TCL’s DTEK phones.
There is also a 4,000mAh battery on board to keep the Snapdragon 625 ticking over. The KeyOne had the same chip with a 3,505mAh battery and lasted for an exceptionally long time in comparison to most other Android handsets.
We expect the Motion to last at least two days on a single charge. You can recharge it easily too with Quick Charge 3.0.
It will ship with Android Nougat 7.1 and will feature BlackBerry’s pleasingly decent skin, which doesn’t change much but adds the BlackBerry software suite with the universal inbox app Hub and useful features like icon widgets.
As ever, TCL is keen to push BlackBerry’s security legacy and indeed we found the KeyOne to receive security patches very fast and second only to the Google Pixel.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.