BlackBerry Motion Costs £399 In The UK With Pre-Orders Now Live

Pre-orders for the BlackBerry Motion have gone live, introducing a halo smartphone that abandons the brand’s iconic QWERTY keyboard. 

For £399, the BlackBerry Motion is offering a smartphone with a  5.5 inch full HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 system-on-a-chip, 4GB of RAM, and for the first time for a BlackBerry handset, IP67 water and dust resistance. 

All in all, the BlackBerry Motion is a middle-of-the-road smartphone, but a flagship for BlackBerry and manufacturing partner TCL. 

And it’s the first top-of-the-line BlackBerry handset to do away with the physical QWERTY keyboard that appealed to so many business users, which indicated that TCL and BlackBerry have decided its time to move with modern mobiles and ditch a clutch of physical keys and buttons. 

QWERTY killer 

However, Silicon has observed a lot of interest around the physical QWERTY among business users at various technology conferences, so there is chance BlackBerry may have jumped the gun. 

It’s also worth noting that at just under £400, the Motion is not as expensive as high-end smartphones, so BlackBerry could afford to be more daring with sticking to the features it is famous for. 

That being said, the Motion will come loaded with BlackBerry’s secure software, such as messaging service BBM and its DTEK security suite, which should still help the Motion appeal to security-conscious users, especially those who wish to use the handset as a work device that has access to sensitive information. 

A secure ‘Locker’ feature will also be on offer to store sensitive documents and file that can only be accessed via a fingerprint scan or PIN. 

While BlackBerry is fulfilling its ambitions to be a software provider, it is still clinging on in the smartphone arena, albeit with a partner rather than going alone. 

Quiz: Are you a BlackBerry master?