At a time when smartphone makers are selling smartphones for the camera, design and headphone jack, BlackBerry goes big on security aspect of their new phones

Blackberry has launched its latest Android-based smartphones in India - the DTEK50 and the DTEK60 and the company mainly focused on the security aspect of the two new phones. DTEK50 is priced at Rs. 21,990 and will go on sale in the country from this weekend while the DTEK60 is priced at Rs. 46,990 and will go on sale from December.

This time around Blackberry’s main feature is security. The company did talk about other features like 21MP camera, expendable storage but it stayed focused on security aspect of their new phones, Alex Thurber, Senior VP, Global Device sales at Blackberry said “I think we as an industry have failed in being able to make people understand just how important security is, I think we are now catching up on that.. we (Blackberry) aren’t focused on just - for eg. selfie flash, yes we have one but that’s not our whole marketing campaign instead we are looking at productivity and security and empowering the users to manage their own life”

The two new phones will have Blackberry’s security app ‘DTEK by BlackBerry app’ that can tell a user how secure their phones are at all time. The app will also tell users how the different apps on their phones are using the information on their phones. Although Blackberry has licensed their Hub+ technology across all Android, BB's Hub shows all your mail and social media notifications in one interface, but DTEK security app is only available on the new Blackberry phones and the Blackberry Priv. The company finds the Android platform perfect in order to focus on software, Alex said, “We are also focused on android because we understand the need for apps, I see android as a great opportunity for us to continue to grow because it gives us access to a wide range of device types, allows us to focus on software and others to focus on the hardware”

In a quick view we can see the two phones do come with some fine features, BlacKberry DTEK50 is a single-SIM phone with 5.2-inch full-HD, 3GB of RAM, powered by a 1.2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 SoC and has a 13-megapixel rear camera and 8-megapixel front camera. The phone has a 16GB of inbuilt storage exendable to up to 2TB, 2610mAh battery with Quick Charge 2.0, the claims it can charge 80% of the battery in 25mins. The high-end phone, BlackBerry DTEK60 has a bigger display with 5.5-inch QHD and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC. The phone has 32GB of inbuilt storage expandable via microSD card up to 2TB with 4GB of RAM. The smartphone also boasts of a 21-megapixel rear camera with PDAF, dual-tone LED flash, and features the 8-megapixel front camera. The phone comes with 3000mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 that can provide almost 15 days of standby time.

Blackberry also accepted that the reason Blackberry’s first tryst with Android, Blackberry Priv, didn’t do well was the high pricing of the phone and even though Blackberry has packed quite a few features that are certain to interest buyers like selfie flash, superior rear camera and expendable memory we’ll have to see if there are takers for the DTEK60 that’s priced at Rs. 46,990, even when the company claims it is a fully secure smartphone.