Latest BlackBerry Device Touted As Super Thin, Super Secure with a Super Cool Camera

If there is one thing BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) phones are known for, it is security. And the company’s new DTEK50 phone lives up to that reputation while adding a great camera in a super thin body. According to the company, the DTEK50 is the “world’s most secure Android phone,” which may make it one of the best moves BlackBerry has made in sometime as it continues to find its place in the smartphone market.

The Android operating system currently has more than 70 percent of the market, and it is growing globally as iOS is shrinking. One bone of contention with Android however has been security. So when BlackBerry started protecting Android on its Priv smartphone continuing that protection with the DTEK50, reviewers and potential customers began to sit up and take notice. So what is so super about the security, camera and size of the BlackBerry DTEK50?

Company Claims ‘DTEK is One of the Most Secure Android Phones’

BlackBerry DTEK for Android controls what is shared on your device and with whom. You might think you have control of your device at all times, but there are tens of thousands of apps out there designed to take control of many of the features on your phone. And if you’re not aware, these apps can turn your microphone on, send text messages, access your contacts and location and steal your personal information.

The DTEK application has an easy-to-use and visual user interface that lets you see the status of your phone immediately with four essential functions:

• Monitor, giving you a security rating of your device so you can identify what kind of actions you need to take to improve the protection level of the phone with specific security measures;
• Control, adjusting the security settings of your phone to improve its rating;
• Track, monitoring what the apps on the device are doing with advanced tools that let you know what information they have accessed, how they’re using it and for how long. This includes whether or not the apps are accessing your camera, microphone, location and personal information; and
• Alert, notifying you when a specific app is active doing something it is not supposed to be doing.

The security also extends to the screen, which has an oleophobic layer to help prevent the oil residue from your fingers from sticking to the glass. Believe it or not, the smudges left by those oils on the glass give criminals a way to access your smartphone. But if the oil doesn’t adhere to the glass, it doesn’t leave a smudge.

The Camera

The DTEK50 features an 8MP front-facing camera with flash and a 13MP auto-focus rear camera. The front camera is rated at f/2.2, and it can capture images at a pixel size with an 84-degree field of view. The camera also has automatic image and video stabilization, selfie flash and a wide-angle/panoramic selfie mode.

The rear camera is BlackBerry’s fastest-performing model. It uses a 6-element auto-focus f/2.0 lens with 4x digital zoom along with live filters to deliver professional grade photographs. It has dual toned LED flash, automatic face detection and a continuous focus and touch-to-focus feature which you can toggle to get the best image.

The Design

At 147 x 72.5 x 7.4 mm (5.79 x 2.85 x 0.29 inches) and weighing in at 135 g (4.76 oz), the DTEK50 is not the slimmest or lightest phone ever, but when you compare it to previous BlackBerry models, it is definitely much slimmer and lighter then the company’s previous devices.

Here are some of the more notable features for the DTEK50:

• Display — 5.2″ 1080 x 1920 IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, scratch-resistant glass and the aforementioned oleophobic coating
• Processor – Qualcomm MSM8952 Snapdragon 617 with Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 and quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53
• Memory and Storage – 3 GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage with a microSD that can support up to 2 TB
• Connectivity – WLAN, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth v4.2
• Battery – Non-removable Li-Ion 2610 mAh battery with up to 17 hours of talk time on 3G

If the DTEK50 looks familiar to you, that is because it is a modified Alcatel Idol 4, a slightly different version of another recently released phone by a different company.

BlackBerry apparently decided to modify an existing device rather than going back to the drawing board and designing one of its own.

This allowed BlackBerry to quickly deliver a reliable phone that is much cheaper than the Priv’s $699 price tag.

Cost was one of the biggest complaints about the Priv when it was introduced last year.

At $299, the DTEK50 is more affordable, while still maintaining the BlackBerry security standard along with new features that were never previously a priority in the company’s phones.