BlackBerry DTEK50 now official as the ‘world’s most secure smartphone’

That didn't take long. On the same day leaked images of the BlackBerry DTEK50 leaked, BlackBerry has gone ahead and made the device officially official.

BlackBerry has announced the DTEK50 as the "world's most secure smartphone." As we can see, the DTEK50 does indeed share design similarities to the Alcatel-branded Idol 4, but there are certainly some BlackBerry-focused aspects to the upcoming device, especially when it comes to security. Here are just a few things BlackBerry is bringing to the table with the DTEK50 in that regard:

• Rapid Security Patching: BlackBerry has a record of being the quickest to deliver security patches, setting the bar in incident response and patch management to protect your device from malicious threats.
• DTEK™ by BlackBerry App: Enables users to automatically monitor their OS and apps to know when their privacy could be at risk and to take action to improve it. The DTEK app also tracks applications and notifies you when someone is: taking pictures or videos without your knowledge, turning your microphone on, sending a text message, or accessing your contacts or location.
• Hardware Root of Trust: BlackBerry's manufacturing process uses a proprietary technique that adds security from the start, allowing for the tracking, verification and provisioning of DTEK50.
• Secure Boot Process: Starting with the root of trust, each stage of DTEK50's secure boot chain must first verify that the next component is fully intact before proceeding, ensuring your device has not been tampered with since the last restart.
• Android OS hardening: BlackBerry provides additional security patches, improved random number, address space generation and certificate pinning to make it more difficult for attackers to target a device by scrambling application/system memory.
• FIPS 140-2 Compliant Full Disk Encryption: Protects your private information, like pictures or bank information, from being stolen if you were to lose your phone.

As far as the rest of the specifications go, the leak earlier today turned out to be accurate. There is a 5.2-inch 1080p display with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor under the hood. There's a 13MP camera on the back and an 8MP front-facing shooter on the other side. The battery is measured in at 2610mAh, there's 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of built-in storage with a microSD card slot for expandable memory. The DTEK50 is running Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.

There's also a "Convenience Key" on the right side of the device that, when pressed, will automatically launch the BlackBerry Hub.

Pre-orders for the DTEK50 begin today from BlackBerry's official online store. It retails for $299.99, and the unlocked variant works for T-Mobile and AT&T in the United States. It will also be available in Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands in the weeks ahead.

What do you think of the DTEK50? Should they have called it the Neon?

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