BlackBerry KEY2 Hands-On By Engadget

Last year's blackberry, q1 keyboard phone design. The question is: how do you take that and make it better well in the new BlackBerry q2, which we just had a bit of hands-on time with the answer was pretty clear: they made the whole device just a little sleeker. They made the keyboard noticeably better and added some fascinating security and privacy features. Let's take a closer look. Let's just get one thing out of the way upfront when it comes to design the BlackBerry KET is a tremendous improvement over the original I mean just look at this thing. It's built from glass in series, seven aluminum, and it's thinner and more angular and all together, much more modern than the key one.

Blackberry's aren't usually known for their striking physical design. So the work TCL and BlackBerry Mobile have done here is very impressive. Of course, you are never going to buy a blackberry purely because of looks right. Blackberry Mobile is convinced, there's a broad swath of people out there who miss or need physical keyboards on their phones, and I'm happy to report. The key to s keyboard is another big improvement over what we got last year check out these keys they're a little bigger than they are on the q1, and they're notice that we flatter too, which makes them much, much nicer to pick out messages on I used to do a lot of stopping and starting, while using the key once keyboard, because I found the race key caps harder for touch typing.

After a few minutes of playtime, though the key choose layout felt instantly familiar I'm, still not great at using it, since I'm still used to typing on glass, but I suspect, even diehard blackberry fans will find a lot to like here. If you look closely enough at the keyboards bottom right corner, you might notice something a little unusual see that button with the 3x3 arrangement of Don's library calls that the speed key and the name fits because of how fast it makes multitasking see. Each key on the keyboard can act as a shortcut to either an app or an action like composing, a new email or toggling Wi-Fi. The problem with the key one was you couldn't tap a key on the keyboard to use as a shortcut. While you were inside another app with the speed key.

That's no longer the case. A speed key lets. You very quickly jump from app to app without having to open up the launcher or the recent apps window. This is the first new button. Blackberry has added to the keyboard in years and believe me, it makes for lightning-fast multitasking that was well worth.

The wait. Blackberry's also made some really helpful tweaks with software to just look at detect that app. That tells you how secure your phone is or isn't in addition to a new design, it's also more proactive about letting you when apps try to access specific sensors on your phone it'd be weird. If a calculator app tried to quietly access your camera or your microphone right with a new detect, you'll get notifications alerting you to those kinds of shady moves. Thankfully, you can define what sensors you want to get notifications for which should help keep that flow.

Velar, it's more manageable! Blackberry's lock are a secure space where you can store your files. Also, now lets you stick apps in there too, and hide those apps from the launcher. So no one needs to know about your secret life writing stories on Wattpad. The key twos squat 4.5 inch display hasn't changed much since last year, but the phone is noticeably quicker than the key one. That's all thanks to this snapdragon 616 chipsets with 6 gigabytes of RAM inside we're still not looking at flagship grid power here, but these upgrades really do help.

The overall experience. Oh, and around back you'll find BlackBerry's. First, dual camera with two 12 megapixel sensors mounted side-by-side for features like portrait mode and enhanced zoom I didn't get to spend too much time with the camera, but right off the bat. It seemed purely fine, not amazing, not awful. Just fine.

By now it's pretty clear that the BlackBerry keeps you isn't perfect for everybody, but the slice of people it is for does seem to be growing. I mean, after all, privacy concerns about our data have only gotten more pronounced. Who isn't concerned about the data that we saw on our smartphones and upload the servers? These are real issues that we're now having to reckon with, and it feels like the BlackBerry keeps you just might be the right device at the right time. You.

Source : Engadget