BlackBerry has finally caught up with the rest of the mobile industry in embracing fingerprint sensors. The company’s newest smartphone, the DTEK60, is the first BlackBerry device to feature the biometric technology, with a fingerprint sensor embedded on its rear side.
The official announcement of the device, which is now available for USD $499, confirms recent speculation that such a smartphone was in the works. In keeping with the BlackBerry brand, the DTEK60 is being marketed primarily on the basis of its security, with features like full data encryption and a Hardware Root of Trust. While the inclusion of a fingerprint sensor might have further added to that pitch a year or two ago, it’s now such a standard feature on smartphones that it can’t really be used to differentiate the DTEK60.
As Bloomberg reports, this is probably the last device that BlackBerry will promote itself before completely outsourcing its phone production to other companies seeking to use the BlackBerry brand, though it’s already using designs from TCL and software based on Android. But as third party OEMs take the reins for the production of future BlackBerry smartphones, the fingerprint sensor is a feature that is unlikely to disappear, now that it has finally arrived.
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