Concept render for first 5G BlackBerry reveals curved screen, physical QWERTY keyboard and more

BlackBerry fans haven't had much to get excited about lately. Perhaps the zenith of attention took place in July 2018 when the BlackBerry KEY2 was unveiled. In August of last year, after BlackBerry's licensing deal with TCL ended, a new one was signed with OnwardMobility and Foxconn's FIH unit.

OnwardMobility has already said that we should expect to it release the first 5G BlackBerry. At the same time, the company also said that it will continue offering phones that sport BlackBerry's iconic design feature, the physical QWERTY keyboard. And like the BlackBerry handsets of hold, the new models will continue to focus on privacy and productivity.

OnwardMobility CEO Peter Franklin has called the new phone "a global flagship" and said that it could sport a flagship-style camera. Franklin added that there is`a particular hole in the current smartphone market for a handset "that can address the needs of enterprise users, government users and security-conscious consumers – and that’s the gap we expect to fill."

Concept Creator has devised some renders showing what it expects the new 5G BlackBerry to look like. In a video it created to show off this design, the phone is called the Key3, although we wonder whether OnwardMobility would prefer to give the device a brand new name to indicate that it is starting a new BlackBerry era from scratch. Besides the video, there are some still images of the concept render that show off a vertically mounted triple camera bump that starts at the center/top of the phone's rear panel with the iconic BB logo underneath.

The video appears to show off a curved edge design and narrow side bezels for the display. The colors used for this concept render are black and gold. According to LetsGoDigital, we could see the first 5G BlackBerry unveiled between now and the middle of July.

Yes BlackBerry fans, you do see a little bit of the fully opened BlackBerry Priv vertical slider in this device, but that wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it? Specs are unknown at this stage and of course there is no guarantee that the next BlackBerry will resemble the concept renders found in the video and images.