BB Merah Putih, the company that currently holds the right to manufacture and sell BlackBerry smartphones in Indonesia, on Thursday launched the BlackBerry Aurora smartphone for the country. BlackBerry Aurora comes as a result of the partnership between BB Merah Putih and BlackBerry, formed in September last year, which allows the former to manufacture and sell BlackBerry branded devices in Indonesia.
The BlackBerry Aurora is the first Blackberry smartphone developed in Indonesia and is also claimed to be the first BlackBerry smartphone with dual-SIM functionality. The smartphone has already been made available since March 3 through pre-orders and will remain available till March 12 with local retailers at IDR 3,499,000 (roughly Rs. 17,400). Notably, TCL holds the right to manufacture and sell BlackBerry smartphones in most of the world barring select countries in Asia. In India for example, Opteimus Infracom has the licence to manufacture and sell BlackBerry smartphones. The smartphone has been made available in Black, Silver, and Gold colour variants.
The dual-SIM (Micro-SIM) based BlackBerry Aurora runs Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box and sports a 5.5-inch (720x1280 pixels) display. The BlackBerry Aurora is powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 SoC coupled with 4GB of RAM. In terms of optics, the BlackBerry Aurora packs a 13-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel camera at front for taking selfies.
The BlackBerry Aurora comes with 32GB of inbuilt storage, which is expandable via microSD card (maximum capacity not specified). In terms of connectivity options, the smartphone offers 4G LTE connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/ n. The device houses 3000mAh battery. It measures 152x76.8x8.5mm and weighs 178 grams.
Notably, BlackBerry announced earlier this year that the company was looking at more licensing partners to bring the BlackBerry Mercury and future smartphones to the rest of the world.
"We sincerely congratulate BB Merah Putih on the new BlackBerry Aurora, the latest device launched under our software licensing strategy and new model for delivering the 'smart' in the smartphone," said Alex Thurber, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobility Solutions for BlackBerry. "Our customers in Indonesia are very important to BlackBerry, and as we focus on software innovation, we are very excited about our partnership with BB Merah Putih to deliver high-quality devices with the BlackBerry security DNA our customers are so familiar with.
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