Last year, Blackberry confirmed that the company is licensing its brand to OnwardMobility to sell phones under the same moniker and even announced some ambitious plans. And now, a new report has confirmed that a product will be launching sometime in 2021 with a physical keyboard and 5G connectivity. 

IT Home reports that OnwardMobility CEO, Peter Franklin hinted at a 2021 launch of a smartphone that will retain the classic physical keyboard. The smartphone is expected to launch in North America, Europe and Asia as well. As of now, a date has not been set for the reboot launch yet, however it seems likely that the phone will launch very soon.

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It’s not certain how the market will react to a physical keyboard since most phones now use a touchscreen display and how users interact with a smartphone has changed in general. Blackberry’s revival in 2016 was not a major success when the company partnered with TCL. Phones such as the Blackberry Key 2 and Key 2 LE were not as successful as other smartphones. Even though the phones were productivity-oriented and were based on Android, it only targeted enterprise users which led to its failure in the first place. 

Since most users are now used to touchscreen keyboards, the physical QWERTY keyboard was not deemed a massive success and some feel OnwardMobile is doing the same mistake all over again.

“We really see a need for a 5G BlackBerry, Android smartphone with a physical keyboard and being a flagship device,” said Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility told PCMag in an interview last year. 

“To me, the keyboard is one of those things where your brain subconsciously picks up on very minute differences between devices. It’s paramount to me that we have a great experience and a great feel both for the tactility of the keyboard, and how the keys respond and feel,” said Franklin when asked about the physical keyboard. 

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From what we can gather, the next Blackberry smartphone will run on Android OS and have Blackberry security services installed as well. It will be interesting to see how the physical keyboard works on the smartphone and whether the market will be receptive to the classic feature. 

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