BlackBerry will return with the first 5G phone in 2021

BlackBerry has been producing phones independently for years, but after the introduction of its latest phones with BlackBerry OS 10, it decided to hand over production to TCL, who stopped it last year. OnwardMobility takes over from TCL and says it will introduce its first BlackBerry phones with 5G this year.

Return of BlackBerry

TCL had a long-standing partnership with BlackBerry, a company that currently focuses solely on software development. During the past year, the collaboration between these parties came to an end. It was unknown whether the curtain had finally fallen for BlackBerry phones, or whether parties were lining up to take out a license on the brand name. How many companies have entered into the conversation with BlackBerry is unknown, but it is now known that the brand will appear on phones again very soon.

An announcement from OnwardMobility states that the company wants to start selling phones in 2021. It is not the first time that the name OnwardMobility has been mentioned – the name was already mentioned in August in an announcement that the company had licensed BlackBerry. At the time, many details were still unknown, including the time frame within which the company’s phones would circulate on the market.

First 5G BlackBerry

Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility, said, among other things, that the company wants to release phones with support for 5G networks in 2021. In addition, the company announces that it will provide the phones with the well-known physical BlackBerry keyboard. It is still unknown how it will be mounted on a modern device. TCL tried with its ‘KeyOne’ to develop a modern telephone with a physical keyboard, but that device was not to be a great success.

Comes to Europe

Whether it will be a success remains to be seen in the long term. OnwardMobility has announced that it will release the 5G BlackBerry phones in Europe, the United States and Asia, among others. Whether the company also has an eye for Belgium and the Netherlands is still unknown. It is also important to mention that OnwardMobility will not focus on consumers in the first place, as can be read on its website: “OnwardMobility, (…) was created to offer companies, governments and companies nothing less than the most comprehensive and secure solutions for mobile devices. ”

TCL introduced the BlackBerry KeyOne in 2017: one of its last BlackBerry phones

Finally, OnwardMobility indicates that it will use the production capacity of FIH, the Foxconn subsidiary that focuses on the production of telephones. It is known that FIH offers the capacity to develop telephones for companies: whether OnwardMobility will develop its own telephone or whether this task will be assigned to FIH Mobile, is still unknown. It is known that the devices will run on Android with an as yet unknown software layer.