Blackberry Key2 gets a bold new color, priced at a whopping $750

Blackberry isn’t quite ready to show off the Key3, but today it unveiled a new variant of the Key2 as a consolation prize. We had the opportunity to go hands-on with the Key2 Red Edition in its bolder new color.

The Key2 Red has an identical design to the standard edition, aside from the new and livelier red color. The new color is reminiscent of the Atomic Red Key2 LE, which isn’t surprising considering Alcatel previously contributed the LE’s bolder colors as part of the reason for its success with younger consumers and women. Regardless of the motivation, it looks great and stands out much better than the silver model.

The new red color runs along the sides of the phone and extends to the front trim around the display and keyboard. The rear remains a familiar textured black color, except the logo is black instead of silver.

Aside from the color change, the Key2 Red Edition doubles the memory to 128 GB of storage. Of course, certain markets already had a 128 GB variant but this will be a first for regions like North America. Everything else about the phone remains the same, including the mid-range Snapdragon 660 that’s paired with 6 GB of RAM.

The Key2 Red Edition will be sold in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and select parts of Asia. The phone is available for preorder in Europe starting today and is expected to come to other markets in the coming months.

Now for the bad news: If you already thought the Key2 was overpriced, the Red Edition costs $100 more. $750 is a huge sum for a mid-range phone, especially when you consider the only hardware difference from the already expensive $650 Key2 is the doubled storage. Unless you’re a die-hard fan, the price tag will be pretty hard to get over.