The smartphone, the Titan Slim, is Unihertz’s third keyboard smartphone, also known as QWERTY phones.
"Being the third Titan phone in line, Titan Slim adopts a brand-new form which doesn't mean to replace its predecessors, but to offer an alternative for PKB fans who prefer sleekness over ruggedness and rectangular screen over the square ones," says Stephen Xu, the founder and CEO of Unihertz.
Unihertz’s Titan brand is now one of the only options for consumers still seeking keyboard smartphones.
Blackberry, the Canadian tech company, sold off $600-million worth of mobile phone patents earlier this year in a deal that effectively put an end to its smartphone business. At one time Blackberry’s keyboard phones had dominated the cell phone market, with the company at one time holding a 43 percent share of the global handset market.
But the rise of touch-screen technology put an end to their dominance as they were overtaken by rivals like Samsung and the meteoric success of the iPhone. The US tech company Onward Mobility had planned to take over the Blackberry smartphone, but earlier this year it lost the license to manufacture phones using the iconic brand name.
However, Unihertz’s successful Kickstarter, which at the time of writing had more than 2,000 backers and 22 days to go, appears to show that there is still a niche demand for keyboard smartphones. Pledgers to the campaign can buy the phone for $250, though early bird pledgers were able to get the phone for just $190.
"The core value of this company is not to follow the mainstream, but to develop products that offer our customers more choices," said Xu.