BlackBerry KEY2 Launch Event Live Stream By BlackBerry Mobile

Good morning, everyone, how are you today? Thank you. My name is Alan Rose blackberry, mobile president initial communication and, on behalf of my entire team, I'm pleased to welcome you today here in that great place in New York City for the global launch event of blackberry, KET I'd like to extend a very special welcome for all of you that are joining us through livestream from all around the world and a special thanks and welcome as well to blackberry fans. I know that some of you are in the room. Welcome to you guys, I. Thank all of you to be here and I. Hope.

I am happy that you can join us here for celebrating an icon reborn in 2017. Actually, in 2016 late 2016, we officially announced an exciting partnership with blackberry, limited naming, TCL communication as the global brand licensing partner to create new and exciting BlackBerry smartphones. Just a few months later, on April 17, we launched t1 the first product from that partnership and a product marking a new era for the modern BlackBerry smartphones. T1 has been an immediate success with all our consumers, all our customers. We love the product for its very iconic design for its true blackberry features.

First, the productivity that comes with the physical keyboard I know the physical keyboard is certainly the most iconic. The most recognizable feature in a smartphone from BlackBerry physical keyboard is offering a much better typing expense, much more precise, and that precision can only be found when you use a physical keyboard when you can feel the tactile feeling of the keyboard Seen, it offered a great reliability that comes from that battery life. That goes almost up to two days and that take you know that stress that you have all the time in the middle of the afternoon, when you are phone telling is telling you look, you are shifting to send battery, but above all, what really sets BlackBerry smartphones apart. It's the distinct BlackBerry software experience, the dins, distinct BlackBerry security, making modern BlackBerry smartphone the most secured Android smartphones key one laid the foundation in many ways, and this morning you will see why we say key to is an icon reborn. The past year has also been about making our new modern, BlackBerry smartphones, available to virtually any customer around the world in just one year.

We have achieved these milestones and made our product available into more than 50 countries around the world. This includes throughout Europe Middle East North, America, Asia, Australia, Africa and Latin America with we are working with nearly all the top carriers, all the distributors and retailers worldwide, as well as with some top enterprises in the world. Here, I'd like to use that opportunity to thank all our partner for their trust and for their help to make BlackBerry smartphones available globally. We believe that, at a time when all smartphones look alike at a time when the oil industry is in a race to uniformity, we believe that there is a need for something different. We believe that there is a need for an option that stand apart from the rest at Blackberry mobile.

Furthermore, we are making different products. Furthermore, we are standing apart from the rest with clear and different values. Furthermore, we focus at offering to our consumer to our customer, the best in mobile productivity, reliability and security. Of course, with very exceptional and different designs, our smartphones are purpose-built, for those who are communicators want to stay connected, want to get more things done in a secured way, and while productivity and reliability has always been critical features in a blackberry, smartphones, security has never been so relevant and so important. As today, look people realize suddenly that their smartphone has become a very public space, their data widely massively shared without any protection with on any control.

This is bringing new challenges to the whole industry, as security is moving from. You know the enterprise space from the expert discussion to the consumer space. Our partnership with BlackBerry Canada, is putting us in a unique position allowing us to deliver the most secured Android smartphones with new privacy control, features that put consumer back in control of their private data with key to we've brought those values of productivity, reliability, security to the next level. We have created the most powerful BlackBerry smartphone ever with exciting new innovations. We have refined evolved the BlackBerry design to make it even more outstanding, even more different and, of course, we've been working very closely with blackberry in Canada to make key to the most accurate Android smartphone with all those privacy control features an extremely proud of the work that our team has done to make it to a reality, and here I want to thank and honor our partner at blackberry, limited for the strong and continued support and for the hardworking and dedication of their teams.

Now, to give you to give you more insights and more details about t2, let me welcome on stage our global device portfolio director guy turn. Thank you so good morning and welcome everyone. I'm really excited to be here today to officially unveil our latest BlackBerry smartphone. As I mentioned, my name is Gareth and together with my team, we're responsible for the BlackBerry mobile device portfolio and the TCL communication. In fact, many of us have been working with battery products for several years, but I can assure you the focus for a long time now has been building up to this day when we develop a blackberry, we focus on four key pillars, and you can hear them repeated a few times today.

It's about being productive, being reliable, being secure and purposeful design, and before I introduce you to the key to I, just like to touch on those points. A little the main benefit of productivity is time we're all busier than ever. It's clear, a BlackBerry has always been about saving you time, whether it's about the physical keys for immediacy and accuracy or intelligence software experiences. A blackberry gives you back more hours in your week, whether you choose them to get stuff done or to enjoy your personal life, and our lives are now run on our smartphones. So, whether it's about protecting the information that's contained on them or knowing you want a device that won't let you down, people need a device, they can trust, and the BlackBerry is about trust on so many levels.

Trust that you have a battery that will carry you through the most demanding of days without the stress of needing to recharge trust, that you have the features that are important to you in a well-built product, trust that your privacy is being protected and the confidence that, when you use a BlackBerry you're using the most secure smartphone. Although there have clearly been some industry design innovations over the last few years, they're mostly through the lens of a one-size-fits-all vision for design and when everyone is chasing the same design ideal. There are inevitable sacrifices to customer features to achieve that goal. So, whether it's a smaller battery or eliminating removable storage or even a headphone jack. These kinds of features that people care about they get dropped under the banner of progress.

Now, a blackberry has always clearly been a design statement, because it looks so different from everything else in the marketplace. But it's much more than that. A blackberry is designed against a very clear set of customer-centric principles that we place a premium on productivity and convenience and purpose, and it's those pillars which have contributed to bring in an icon reborn. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my honor to officially unveil the BlackBerry key -. The key to design represents a stunning evolution of the key product series.

We've combined premium materials with refined details to bring you a beautifully crafted modern blackberry. Every effort was created was made to create cleaner lines and a more refined overall look, starting with the continuous frame made of cr7 aluminum. That's giving a more seamless, look and feel while maintaining durability. We used Corning Gorilla Glass on the four and a half inch display for extra scratch resistance, but a major visual refresh was enabled by moving the display up. This has enabled us to have a forehead which is 25% smaller than the key one, and it's giving the key to a much more modern edge to edge look but no design.

Aesthetic was too small from the stainless steel ring around the dual camera to the Micro drilled speaker, ports showing a real design, craftsmanship and symmetry t-too also includes a new diamond pattern. Soft touch back, which of course complements the overall premium feel, but importantly, is giving great grip and a feel of nice comfort in hand when using the device. A redesign, though, also took critical feedback from our customers. They told us, we prefer a device, that's just a little lighter and slimmer. Rookie ? is 12 grams, lighter and close to 1, millimeter, slimmer, but we've still maintained an excellent battery life.

We've also aligned the volume rocker, a textured power key and the convenience key in a single cluster on the right hand, side of the device. This is bringing a much more seamless, look and feel, but importantly again, it's back to that user control and to ensure this customer choice on two popular colors key to will launch in both silver and black variants in most markets at launch. But I work on bringing our latest BlackBerry has also been focused on bringing the most powerful experience. T2 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, to ensure a great overall performance, but importantly without losing power efficiency. It also comes with a Snapdragon x12 LTE modem to make sure our customers can really benefit from fast download speeds.

We've included six gigabytes of RAM as standard. This comes with 64 and options for a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of storage and, of course, extra micros slots. If people want more on device, storage people who are also fans of dual SIM will be pleased to know we'll be bringing out a dual SIM variant in certain regions at launch. Also, doubling both the memory and storage on key to ensure even greater productivity due to the smoother performance and improved multitasking packing a three-and-a-half thousand William battery with support for Qualcomm quick charge, three is ensuring key to continue a legacy of outstanding battery life. This battery really will take you through the most demanding of days without ever needing to think.

Where can I recharge? It's its. In fact, for many people this is going to continue happily into a second day of use. The microphone placement has been redesigned. So now we have optimal call quality and to complement this we've added HD audio, to improve audio playback and speakerphone performance. Make no mistake: the blackberry k2 packs a powerful punch.

It is our most advanced BlackBerry smartphone ever to be an icon reborn, though this means we need a truly special keyboard. So let me tell you about how we've evolved this. The physical keyboard has always set a BlackBerry apart, making communication immediate tactile, accurate uncomfortable when, while leaving the screen free to focus on the content, the parallels with computing are clear. Why do you all still use a laptop? Why do you see so many people with a tablet and then a keyboard accessory when they can type on glass? It's clear so from our point of view, when combining it with the Android ecosystem, we're confident we can regrow the keyboard market with blackberry and as alarm already mentioned, with key one. We've already shown it's possible to reinvent a physical keyboard to change the buttons and controls to bring new experiences well with t2.

We've really pushed the boundaries on innovation and usability even further one. Big change, you'll notice, almost immediately the keys on the key to our 20% larger for a much improved keyboard. Experience. Importantly, the overall footprint of the design has remained unchanged. I'll tell you from the very start of this project.

We had teams studying the clique, Enos level of a bold 9900 keyboards as a reference point. I can assure you. This is a joy to type on accurate, immediate and effortless, but every small detail has been refined from a new Matt key finish for more comfortable typing to a new fret design for optimal key, spacing a more noticeable print color. So the keys are easier to read and more dynamic backlighting for user control. We've made sure this keyboard lives with the most iconic of blackberry, keyboards.

Of course, we've also continued. The popular intelligent keyboard features from key one, for example the ability to use the keyboard as a trackpad to scroll through your browser, webpages emails, anything else and flick typing for faster messaging. This is a keyboard that is learning how you type to help you and, of course, we've maintained the very popular fingerprint sensor in the space bar. However, I want to share just one more innovation on the keyboard, we're always obsessing. How can we help our customers stay connected but never miss a beat.

How can we help them get somewhere faster? How can we help them save time with key one? We started a journey with shortcuts the ability to customize 26 of the keys with either a short press or a long press to get immediate access to your favorite apps contacts or features from the home screen, but wouldn't it be great if we could save you even time? So for the first time in more than a decade, we have a new key on the BlackBerry keyboard. We call it the speed key, a dedicated shortcut key for helping you save time and in doing so we're bringing to the key to a unique Android experience, unlike any other, so here's other speed key works. Imagine today you're using another Android, smartphone or even an iPhone, and you want to move from one application to another. You pretty much have to go back to the home screen scroll to love, take the app and take it from there. Maybe it's in an open, app drawer.

Now people are used to this today, so you think this just takes me a few seconds but think about just how often you're accessing your favorite apps contacts and features today. Believe me, those seconds add up through the day. Well the speed key eliminates that wasted time. So we move to the key to experience. Let's say you're in an email, and you want to jump to Instagram.

All you need to do is hold the speed key and then the letter you have assigned for an Instagram shortcut, let's say a short press of the letter, I and you're instantly into Instagram. Imagine now you can jump from Instagram to Twitter, from Twitter to whatsapp, to blackberry, hub to Google Maps, to check your commute home and then call her to let them know you're on your way, all of this without having to go to a home screen and spend endless time swiping. You really can save so much more time with blackberry, twos speed game, so we have a key to design with stunning craftsmanship and usability that is lighter, stronger and slimmer whilst maintaining excellent battery life. We have a high performance specification to ensure an excellent experience, and we have the most intelligent keyboard ever with genuine innovation, to save you time with the speedy key now to explain more about the software innovations. We're bringing two key to.

Please join me in welcoming to the stage our senior product manager, Patricia quieten. Thank you thanks, Gareth good morning, I'm so excited to be here today, as Gareth mentioned, my name is Patricia Carbon and I work in our product team, helping to bring BlackBerry smartphones to life. Blackberry smartphones are so much more than the iconic design they're the seamless integration of hardware and software delivering an experience that you can only find on a blackberry, and this helps our customers be more efficient, stay better connected and provides them with one of the most secure mobile experiences in the market. Today, blackberry KET brings a number of software enhancements and this morning, I'm going to take you through a few of my favorite, both previous ones, we've pulled forward from other devices, but also some really great new experiences in the camera, an intelligent battery management and the evolution of Locker, the BlackBerry key two pairs, the best of Android 8.1 with the iconic blackberry experience with access to millions of apps in the Google Play, Store and pre-loaded experiences like Google Assistant in Google lends key to is the modern blackberry you've been waiting for. It features blackberry hub, which brings all of your messages together in one consolidated place, and that really saves you time from having to jump from app to app.

This includes emails, tax messages and any social media account, including WhatsApp. With a simple pinch gesture. You can quickly filter unread messages, so you can catch up on what you've missed and what you've not yet responded to and within hub. You can easily peek into your calendar to see if that important meeting in the morning has been cancelled, and now you're available to meet friends for lunch and taking a look at that calendar I've got a lot of open time for lunch with friends today, because staying connected is also about sharing your experiences. We've made some huge improvements to the key to camera capture those moments you want to remember with the first dual rear camera on a blackberry, smartphone, these dual 12 megapixel cameras being improved, bring big improvements in low-light conditions, autofocus and improved image stabilization, so that every photo you take is just fantastic.

We're also introducing some new experiences with portrait mode users. Can capture beautiful portrait, looking images creating very dramatic and professional-looking effects. The optical super zoom makes it possible to capture better photos with greater details even from further away, and the multi frame capture improves that clarity with a really simple and seamless user experience, and because we've integrated Google Lens into the photo gallery, you can actually interact with the world around you, so whether it's learning more about a landmark or taking a picture of a billboard to add to your calendar events, the BlackBerry KET has also been built with intelligent, intuitive experiences. Our users are always on the move and demanding much, much more from their smartphones. The enhanced convenience key makes it easy to access the content you need relevant to where you're at, so we have custom profiles built in for at home in the car, in a meeting or on the so that you can access three different apps in each of these four modes.

The convenience key will understand where you're at and present you with the right profile, based on your Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection, or by looking at your hub calendar. What this means is that when you're in the car driving you're going to get presented with those relevant options like Google Maps or listening to some music on your playlist or access to Google assistant, but if I'm in a meeting you're going to get more options that are more relevant to meeting mode things like hub notes or voice recorder. So it's easier to take down those important action items. As Gareth mentioned battery life has always been stand out in a Blackberry, but if you've forgotten to charge your phone we've built in some intelligent power management to help you get through the new smart battery. Experience learns from your daily charging habits to recommend when to charge.

So you have the battery power to make it through important meetings, maybe late, dinners or making sure you can get on your flight home with your boarding pass like all of our your BlackBerry smartphones. The key to is secured at every layer from hardware to firmware to the OS and apps layer, but in today's world we're finding that security. Just isn't enough. The collection and commoditization of personal data is driving a real need for customer privacy and that's why key two is built with a number of privacy experiences that help you understand what information is being used about you by whom, and it gives you some controls to take back some of that. One example of this is the locker lockers in the area on your key to only accessible with a fingerprint or password.

This secure app adds an extra layer of protection for all your personal content that you've put inside, and it features options like photo gallery and private folders just for those times when you want special photos or documents not uploaded to a cloud. Noodle Locker is a private browser. The Firefox focused by Mozilla, for when you don't want your web surfing tracked or synced across all of your machines, and it will also delete your history immediately upon exit Walker is all about privacy and because apps can also reveal private information about you. Walker adds protections to those as well. For example, you can use Locker 2 an added extra layer of authentication to your work email.

So if you let a friend borrow your phone to make a phone call, they can't see your sensitive business emails, but for ultimate discretion. Apps can also be added to Locker, so they no longer appear on your home screen or in your apps' tray, and this is especially helpful for things like budgeting and banking apps. You just don't want anybody to see them or access them to give you more information on BlackBerry's legendary security and how it's integrated with our key to product. Please welcome to the stage Alex server from blackberry, limited, Thank, You Patti good morning, everybody, it's wonderful to be here today in New, York, I'm, Alex, Thurber I'm, the general manager of the mobility solutions business unit at blackberry. Before that we were called the devices business unit.

Before that we were just called blackberry. It's my group. That's created, developed and launched every single BlackBerry device from the very beginning, all the way up through our wonderful partnership with TCL, and it's great to be here to celebrate the launch of the key 2 and discuss some very important privacy and security features that we have when it comes to this product. Blackberry has reimagined itself over the last couple of years into a true security software company today, rather than just being focused on devices, were focused on enterprise software, secure communications, connected transportation and by the way we announced yesterday, we're now in 120 million cars around the world, cybersecurity consulting and secure smartphones, really what we look on as the true enterprise of things. At the end of the day, though, to me the most important thing in this IOT ecosystem is the smartphone, because that's the device, that's with us all the time.

It knows us better, maybe than we know ourselves, so we've been focused as soon as we move towards Android on. How do we take all of our legacy security from bb10 from our BB OS days and bring that to the Android ecosystem? Now, when we talk about security, we're not just talking about some little AV layer that runs on top of your other apps. We actually go through and drive security into every single part of a secure of a smartphone from the secure hardware and the work that we do there all the way up to the application layer and that's what allows us to be so comfortable when we talk about security and the true fact that we have the world's most secure Android smartphone, now I'm not going to sit here and describe all of this because we'd be here all day. But there are a few key items that I wanted to cover to make sure that everybody's aware of just how secure we are. The first is from a hardened operating system we go in, and we make changes throughout the entire stack, both at the current, the bootloader level, the Linux kernel and the Android operating system.

We make changes throughout. All of that, so you can be confident that your device, when it comes out of the factory when you turn it on, is secure. Everything done in the secure in the operating system and all around all the security software is controlled by us in Canada. We sign the final package before it's installed on the system at TCL. In fact, what's interesting is if that link between TCL and Waterloo goes down their manufacturing line stops.

In addition to that, of course, we jointly work together to deliver monthly security patches very important in the security world that you're is up-to-date, but because of all the work we also do in the operating system if, for some reason, you're a little late on a patch, or you miss a particular patch, you can be confident that nothing has. There is no opportunity for malware to get in and really cause a problem. Now, on top of all of that, all the work that we do that's kind of under the covers. We think it's very important that you be aware of. What's going on your device as well, and that's why we put together a number of enhanced privacy tools when we transition to Android, we made the decision to bring out an application golden detected, and one way to think about D Tech is that it is an it's a dashboard into the security status of your phone kind of ongoing view into your security posture.

So when you start D tech up, it gives you a nice little view that it runs a quick scan, and it gives you a quick, immediate understanding of whether your phone is secure or not. Now what's exciting about D Tech is that if things are not at their perfect level, it actually tells you what to do to change that and gives you the option to just simply click on the screen jump immediately to that setting and fix it. So, in this case, obviously there's an issue around data encryption screen, lock and factory reset protection. We want to make it very clear to everybody exactly what their security posture is, because at the end of the day at blackberry, we believe you own. Your data, you control your privacy, so if you're a true millennial, my 21-year-old daughter, is an example who's who shares way too much as far as I'm concerned, she can do that with her blackberry device.

If you're, a slightly older businessman like myself, who just wants to be a little more lock down, I could be confident that the might that my device is set to provide exactly that level of security and privacy. So that covers all the software elements, but we hope still have to understand that there's a lot going on your phone, both from a heart and especially around a hardware perspective so based on a technology, that's called blackberry, integrity detection. We call it and Bide we put triggers throughout the operating system and with the hardware so that you can understand if something's, going on your phone, that you're not expecting, in this case a notification pops up that the free flashlight app, and we should put free in quotes in this case- has accessed your microphone. Now. I've had a lot of flashlights in my life, I've never had one.

That's needed a microphone, so I'm yeah I would be a little concerned about this. Now you can quickly because of the notification that popped up, go in click on that and turn off that permission, and we have this monitoring all the different hardware aspects of the phone itself, so that you can be aware if something turns on your microphone, perhaps your cameras or simply is reporting your location when you're on when you're, not aware of that again, the idea is that you are in control and that's something that has gone throughout our history at blackberry and something that we're excited to continue to bring forth so now to bring out the most important information this morning, I'd like to introduce Francois, Mayer who's, the chief commercial officer, blackberry mobile, but talk about exactly how to buy the device thanks very much. Thank you, Alex good morning, everybody really pleased to be here. I'm, Francois and I had a global sales for a backpack mobile at TCL communication. We are ever so excited to be here today and also very excited that very soon customers, all over the world will be able to experience our all-new blackberry KET as you've seen and heard today, we've had a tremendous number of new features to make this the most advanced BlackBerry smartphone, ever from an iconic, refined design to improve performance and, of course, our most intelligent keyboard ever we're very proud of the work our teams have put into making blackberry key to a reality, and of course, I would like to thank our partners at blackberry limited for their continued support.

I would like also to recognize and thank our channel partners. Many of them are here today. Many of them are following us from abroad. We are proud to be part of your device and mobile solutions offering by now we work with more than 110 carriers around the world, as well as most leading retailers, online, specialist and Enterprise resellers in more than 50 countries, actually you're, never far from experiencing and being able to purchase a blackberry, handset anywhere in the world or add it to your carrier contract. Now it is my pleasure to announce that the BlackBerry key 2 will begin shipping and be available by pre-sell this month to select markets such as the US Canada China, the UK Germany France, and the United Arab Emirates.

Wider availability globally will begin early July through our carrier, retail and other partners around the world. We'll share much more news on this very, very soon. The retail recommended price of the BlackBerry key 2 will start at 649, US dollar 649 euros, 579, British, Pound and 829 Canadian dollars, but for our fans here in New York city, they will have the chance to be among the first in the world to experience the key to starting tomorrow, as we open our very first pop up showroom in this very space here open to the public. In addition to hands-on time, will key to we'll also be offering the chance to win a blackberry key to every hour for the opening times of this pop-up showroom on Friday and Saturday on behalf of myself and our entire blackberry mobile team. Thank you ever so much for being here today.

We'll have more news to share around our global launches regional and local launches, so please be sure to sign up to our website and follow us on Twitter for the latest news. Now, please, let me leave you with the world premiere of our blackberry. He to commercial. Let's watch key to an icon reborn thanks for coming up it's been years. Is that what I think it is? But he's not you have here.

What is this? That's a phone that I haven't had to charge for two days. What is that a keyboard? That's what's keeping our data safe, and it's a speed key to all my apps watch there. It is you sound, annoyed, yeah, it's all Android, that's a blackbird! That's a blackberry! I used to love that blackberry I still do the BlackBerry key to an icon reborn. What makes blackberry to an icon reborn? Actually I would say. First, you know it's a true blackberry product.

When you see it from a distance, you can't make a mistake. It looks like a blackberry. It's you know the design. Furthermore, it's a blackberry. We have doubled the memory compared to q1, and you know, more importantly, it runs on Android, but not any Android is secured version of Android secured by blackberry.

There's such a lack of real options for designing everything, kind of looks the same so having this really iconic keyboard, that's reimagined and with great software experiences integrated and giving real choice in the market, I think it's more relevant than ever I guess by Nature. These are our personal phones, our work phones. You need something that's going to last as long as you do, and that seems to be 22 hours out of a 24 hour a day and can just you know, deliver everything you need it to deliver. I love, my black key, too I think blacks, a great color. It's very stealthy I can make it very apparent if I want to show it off as a fashion statement, or I can keep it a little more hidden if I'm, just if it's there but I, don't want it to be a center of attention.

You.

Source : BlackBerry Mobile