BlackBerry unveiled an Android-based handset on Tuesday, a device that combines the Android software and app catalog with the company's security and productivity features at a lower price. The company hopes the DTEK50 will sell in greater numbers than the Priv, its first phone using the Android operating system, which Chief Executive John Chen has said suffered because of its high price.

The touchscreen-only DTEK50 will cost $299 in the United States, Canada and across Europe.

At its November launch the Priv, cost $699 without a contract in the United States and C$899 without a contract in Canada. The company cut the price of the Priv in the United States and across Europe in April, while earlier this month it said it would cease production of its Classic handset, which uses its own BlackBerry 10 operating system.

DTEK50 measures just 7.4 mm thin, 147 mm long and 72.5 mm wide. And at 135 grams, it?s one of the lightest phones you?ll ever use.

It sports an HD 5.2-inch full HD (424 PPI) screen capable of displaying 16 million colors with 24-bit color depth.

Engineered to deliver great photos, DTEK50 lets you capture the perfect selfie with an 8MP front-facing camera with flash and the perfect moment with a 13MP auto-focus rear camera. It?s equipped with a range of settings like live color filters and manual controls.

The 8MP front camera sports a fixed-focus lens with an 84-degree field of view, automatic image and video stabilization, a specialized selfie flash, and a wide-angle/panoramic selfie mode. Rated at f-2.2, this camera can capture images at a pixel size of 1.125 um. It?s also capable of recording HD video at a resolution of up to 1080p at 30 frames per second.

The 13MP rear camera, meanwhile, features a 6-element, auto-focus f2.0 lens with 4x digital zoom. It is BlackBerry?s fastest-performing camera to date. In addition to PDAF and its dual toned LED flash, it makes use of automatic face detection, can toggle between continuous focus and touch-to-focus, and offers a range of live filters that can be applied to your photos. Like the selfie cam, it can also record 30 frames-per-second HD video at up to 1080p.

In addition to its screen and top-notch cameras, it houses a 2610 mAh battery, 3GB of RAM, 16 GB onboard storage with support for up to 2 TB via the micro SD slot, and a QC 8952 Octa-Core processor.

Its screen is comprised of scratch-resistant glass, and its textured shell can resist any minor bumps and scrapes you put it through.

Security at the Forefront

DTEK50 was designed to address the security and privacy needs of Android users.

DTEK50 encrypts all users? information, including business critical data and personal data such as pictures, videos and contacts. Malware protection is also built-in along with back-up, wipe and restore capabilities. Additional software provides users with visibility and control over which apps get access to personal info or device features such as the microphone or camera. BlackBerry also promises to deliver security patches on the same day that Google publicly releases information about them.

Features that make DTEK50 a secure Android smartphone, include:

• DTEK by BlackBerry App: Enables users to automatically monitor their OS and apps to know when their privacy could be at risk and to take action to improve it. The DTEK app also tracks applications and notifies you when someone is: taking pictures or videos without your knowledge, turning your microphone on, sending a text message, or accessing your contacts or location.
• Hardware Root of Trust: BlackBerry?s manufacturing process uses a proprietary technique that adds security from the start, allowing for the tracking, verification and provisioning of DTEK50.
• Secure Boot Process: Starting with the root of trust, each stage of DTEK50?s secure boot chain must first verify that the next component is fully intact before proceeding, ensuring your device has not been tampered with since the last restart.
• Android OS hardening: BlackBerry provides additional security patches, improved random number, address space generation and certificate pinning to make it more difficult for attackers to target a device by scrambling application/system memory.
• FIPS 140-2 Compliant Full Disk Encryption: Protects your private information, like pictures or bank information, from being stolen if you were to lose your phone.

Ready to Work

DTEK50 also offers BlackBerry?s enterprise management solutions:

• Android for Work and Google Play for Work: Allows for simple and secure integration with an enterprise environment as well as easy access to numerous rich business and IT-managed apps.
• Full Enterprise Mobility Management Support: DTEK50 supports BlackBerry?s suite of EMM applications and secure productivity solutions, including: WatchDox by BlackBerry for secure file-sharing, Good Work for business-class email and collaboration tools, Strong Authentication by BlackBerry as a VPN solution, SecuSUITE for Enterprise for secure voice and instant messaging communication, BBM Protected for encrypted messaging and BES12 for secure cross-platform management.

A third Android device is expected from BlackBerry in coming months.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Baseline Software Support: Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Size (LxWxD): 147 mm x 72.5 mm x 7.4 mm
• Weight (w/battery): 135g
• Processor:
  • Qualcomm 8952 with 64 bit Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 (Snapdragon 617 Octa-Core, 64 bit)
  • Adreno 405, 550MHz GPU
• Memory:
  • 3 GB RAM
  • 16 GB Flash
  • Expandable Memory: Hot swappable microSD memory card (Up to 2TB)
• Display:
  • 424 PPI
  • 1920 x 1080 resolution
  • 24-bit color depth
• Screen Size:
  • 5.2" diagonal
  • 16:9 aspect ratio
• Rear Facing Camera:
  • 13-megapixel auto-focus camera
  • Phase Detect Auto Focus (PDAF), Fast focus lock
  • HDR
  • 6-element f2.0 lens
  • Dual Tone LED Flash ? Enhanced photo color balance
  • 4x digital zoom
  • Continuous & touch to focus, face detection, image stabilizatio
  • Panorama, Burst, Live Filters
  • Multi-frame Low Light Enhancement
  • 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps
    
• Front Facing Camera:
  • 8MP Fixed-Focus, f2.2
  • 1.125um pixel size
  • 84° wide angle/field of view lens
  • Image & video stabilization
  • 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps
  • Selfie Flash
  • Wide Selfie Mode (also known as Selfie Panorama)
  • Multi-Frame Low Light Enhancement
• Multimedia:
  • Image formats: BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, WEBP
  • Audio & video formats: 3GP, 3G2, AAC, AVI, ADTS, ASF, AWB, DIVX, FLAC, IMY, MID, MKV, MOV, MP3, MPEG-4, MXMF, OGG, OTA, RTTTL, RTX, WAV, WEBM, WMV, XMF
  • Audio & video encoding/decoding: MPEG-4, AAC+, AAC-LC, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, DivX, EVRC, FLAC, H.263, H.264, H265/HEVC, MIDI, MP3, OPUS, PCM, QCELP, VC-1, VORBIS, VP8, VP9, WMA, WMA 9/10, WMA Pro, Xvid, eAAC+
  • Streaming protocols: HTTP(S) Progressive Download, HTTP(S) Live Streaming (HLS) version 3, RTSP (RTP, SDP)
• Pre-Loaded Apps:
  • BlackBerry Applications: BlackBerry Keyboard, BlackBerry Hub, BlackBerry Calendar, Contacts by BlackBerry, Notes by BlackBerry, Tasks by BlackBerry, BlackBerry Camera, BBM, DTEK by BlackBerry, BlackBerry Device Search, BlackBerry Launcher, BlackBerry Services, BlackBerry Help, BlackBerry Password Keeper, Microsoft exFAT Technology for BlackBerry, BlackBerry Content Transfer, Yahoo! Finance
  • Android Applications: Gmail, Hangouts, Google Chrome, Google Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Play, Google Photos, Messenger (SMS), Android Device Manager
• Navigation: All-touch screen, with intuitive gesture based navigation
• Keyboard:
  • On screen BlackBerry Keyboard
  • Contextual auto-correction, next-word prediction and a personalized learning engine that gets to know the way you type with on screen flick typing or seamless flow typing