Blackberry KEYone 2 release date, specs news: Follow-up device in development

BlackBerry's follow-up to KEYone is rumored to come out in January 2018.BlackBerry

Blackberry attempts another comeback with the successor to the BlackBerry KEYone.

The smartphone manufacturer managed to become relevant again when they released the BlackBerry KEYone in April. Now that they've caught the eye of the public again, they're planning to ride on their initial success by launching a sequel.

According to reports, a follow-up to the KEYone is now in development. Bearing the model number BBF100-1, the smartphone will reportedly have the same aesthetics as its predecessor as well as some features from the all-touch BlackBerry Motion.

It was also revealed that the follow-up for the KEYone will run on Snapdragon 660 chipset, which has an octa-core central processing unit (CPU) and the Adreno 512 graphics processing unit (GPU).

While the smartphone in development still has an unknown display size, it is touted to sport a screen resolution of 1080 x 1620 pixels which works out to an aspect ratio of 3:2.

Like the original iteration, the reported KEYone sequel will be developed by TCL. But before the new device comes out, BlackBerry will focus on clearing out KEYone stock as much as possible.

While the BlackBerry KEYone officially came out at the Mobile World Congress in late February, the phone's prototype was already unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January. If TCL will follow its pattern, the follow-up phone could come out in mid-January of next year.

At this time, reports only talk about some specs for the KEYone sequel but other details about the phone unit have yet to be disclosed. However, there is reason to believe that what has been revealed so far is legitimate, given that the details originated from TCL.

The KEYone was made available to majority of the countries around the world in the course of a year and its sequel should follow suit, with the phone company looking to target business and enterprise users.