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New images reportedly show off BlackBerry’s last QWERTY Android smartphone

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BlackBerry made its debut in the Android space just over a year ago (13 months tomorrow, in fact), but its efforts in the market haven’t been particularly successful. The BlackBerry Priv was a fantastic option and the DTEK50 and DTEK60 are solid, secure, affordable devices. Sales, though, aren’t all that impressive. That led to BlackBerry opting to pull itself out of the smartphone market entirely, but not without one more shot…

A few weeks ago BlackBerry’s CEO confirmed that the company is planning to launch one more Android smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, and over the weekend images hit the web of a device that might just be BlackBerry’s last smartphone with a physical keyboard.

This new device, unlike the BlackBerry Priv, features a keyboard which doesn’t slide out, which could or could not be a bad thing. Interestingly, the screen still appears to retain the same aspect ratio that most devices do, attributing to the large overall size of the phone.

There’s nothing to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that this is indeed a device by BlackBerry, but we can easily see how it could be. The keyboard is very reminiscent of former BlackBerry keyboards and the launcher has “shortcuts” similar to BlackBerry’s launcher on the Priv and DTEK smartphones.

It’s unclear when this device would launch, but whenever it does, it’ll likely be one of the last devices the company ever launches, so fingers crossed it’s a good one.

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