Blackberry Key2 Review - Most underrated or Most hated Smartphone 2018 ?! By TechMagnet

Blackberry once a premium brand for businesspeople turned into an old-fashioned company which did not keep up with the trends, became uncool and died, a slow and painful death. The market share even reached 0% back in 2017, but with the new blackberry key series, they now want to come back to life. I've tested the BlackBerry key 2 for 30 days and today, I want to bring you guys my full review. The key 2 is made by TCL under the BlackBerry brand, and it's powered by the latest version of Google's Android prior to using the key ? I, never had a blackberry. In my thoughts, blackberry users were Enterprise focused using it because of its superior security and other boring crap. Now I've had keyboard smartphones in the past for sure, like Nokia, communicator and some other cool phones, but no real smartphone, like the key to the phone, feels really premium with an aluminum body with a leather like soft touch, grip on the back, the phone comes also with a headphone jack and USB type-c.

The buttons feel great to press and there's also one additional configurable but included. It comes with a 4.5 inch display with a resolution of 1620 x, 1080 pixels, but its body is due to the big keyboard, not really smaller than any 5.5 inch smartphone. The screen itself is bright and has good viewing angles and colors, but its small size is weird now. The form factor makes it really strange for consuming media and watching videos which only works with black bar surrounded due to the free by 2 aspect ratio screens also gaming on it is really weird due to the keyboard being in the way, but well. This phone is not meant to be a media or gaming smartphone, its built-in speakers solid just about loud and fixed sounding enough, and it's not harsh at maximum volume.

Performance-Wise, the mid-range snapdragon, 616, CTU and six gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage are providing a perfect speed. I've used a p20, Pro and s9 pluses daily drivers and, to be honest, even though I'm a pretty heavy user, the phone kept up good to my workflow, even playing PU BG on the phone was no problem, and it performed good with only occasional lags for sure. It's no high-end chipset, but I think for most people the performance would be enough, and the battery life is even better. The phone comes with a lot of BlackBerry apps pre-installed like BBM and the hub now, I looked them and instantly turned it all off. There is no use for the blackberry messenger as I'm the only one in my friend circle, who is using a blackberry and I, also use WhatsApp all the time, even though the privacy is may be at risk, but I don't care, as for the hub, its BlackBerry's app that consolidates messages from various services in one place to organize a day.

Now, for me, it's just useless as I. Don't use any other BlackBerry app. This really makes no sense. For me. It's working fine, but I'm a person who uses native Google, Android, apps, and I barely use some third parties.

There is also DAC which powers the BlackBerry security app and constantly monitors what goes in and out of your phone. All you see the status level, which gives you a security rating. You can also easily review permissions of every app to understand the information they can access and keep track of security issues anyway. For me, it does not make sense since I take care of what I install on my phone and I carefully monitor all my connections and keep security apps installed on my phone I. Personally think that that feature is more like.

Let's sell this to people who have no clue what they're doing, and so they can think that they are safe. The most funny app was the privacy shield which blacks out via screen and only leaves a little viewing window, so only youth can read the text new phone now. For me, this is more paranoia than safety and I did bind this to the configurable side key just for fun, but to be honest, I wouldn't even use that in the train or anywhere in public now the keyboard. The key hate is now 20 larger than on the key one taking over the needless bumpy frats between the rows. Even though the keys are bigger, I had huge issues with my big hands to use the keys.

I was much slower than on any on-screen keyboard, and it felt weird after some time, I got faster, but still if he used a touchscreen for years. This feels so weird, and your brain needs some time to relearn typing. Even though typing is not that cool. For me, the 52 programmable shortcuts would really make my day. The speed key is the first new key on the blackberry, and it lets you assign and launch any shortcut with a quick press of the speed key plus a letter.

There are 26 letters and long and short combinations double that number 252. For instance, the speed key plus F could open up Facebook, which is really cool, but on my p20 Pro I'm, as fast ins, I have all the apps I use daily on my big home screen. Also, the entire keyboard access a trackpad, letting you easily scroll through the menus by slightly patting the keys. Now this is really cool, as you don't cover the screen, while scrolling, and I kept scrolling through my feet with the keyboard on the plus side, the key to comes with a perfect battery life out of its 3,500 million bells battery I'm, getting around 5 to 7 hours of screen on time with display almost at maximum all the time, and with that I would say, most people should get 1.5 to 2 days of battery life without a problem. Although charging is really fast and in my 30-minute test, it charged up to 60% for sure there's also a fingerprint scanner included, which is hidden in the space key of the keyboard.

That is really cool, and the fingerprint scanner works really fast and reliable. The BlackBerry key, too, is 12. Megapixel camera takes good-looking photos in daylight, and it's 2 times. Optical zoom is really handy. Now everything is better than on the key one and the 8 megapixel front-facing camera also improved.

The filters have a bit too high saturation and sharpness applied for my taste, but are in general. Ok, sometimes it fails on the correct color balance and photos and low-light turn out to be grainy. It's definitely under average in this price range, but gets the job done for occasional snapshots. Patrol remote, however, is really messy and mostly applies to blur at the wrong locations. It's horrible.

The camera app feels weird and video mode is false, a bit messy. But after you find your way around, it's ok, it does record 4k, video and high frame rate, and here are some video samples so guys. Here's a quick 4k recording tests on the BlackBerry key ? and well just check it out right now. I can barely see anything on the screen, but so far looks actually pretty smooth, pretty sharp, pretty ok, colors, but well just check it out right now on your screen and listen to the audio quality. If I have a look at this guy, as you can see there all the clouds, so this is looking pretty good.

Actually, even though we have a little tough lighting situations, the green tones looking really cool plenty of fish is over here. Maybe you guys can see him. Oh well, that's the rear, camera and 4k 30fps on the BlackBerry key ?, now guys, here's a quick, 1080p 30fps recording test on the BlackBerry key ?, and this is with enhanced image stabilization. So this should be a little more smooth, but well, as you can see, edges basically everything looks way smoother than 4k. So there's a lot of yeah soft edges so far as I can see on the screen, but just check it out.

Right now on the PC, dynamic range looks still pretty good. A lot of dark tones over here still, there's a lot of light. So a lot of clouds you can see. Basically everything so dynamic range is looking actually quite good on a blackberry, key ?, the guys, here's a 1080p, front-facing camera test on the blackberry and well you get a message when you switch resolution that stabilization is not supported in 1080p, but well is also not supporter than any other resolutions. This is really weird.

Now this is 1080p, as you can see. Well, it struggles a little of lighting conditions. Dynamic range is not the best camera. That's what we get out of the phone case in camera, 1080p maximum 30fps at 720p. You have 60fps, listen to the microphone quality, have a look over there wow that's a phone facing camera connectivity was fine, great Wi-Fi signal, great Bluetooth and GPS signal as well.

Also, when doing calls it sounded clear and loud enough for my taste. So all in all that Barry has tried to squeeze every bit of use out of the keyboard, though meaning it can be a control center for the whole phone if you like, but you will definitely need some time to get used to it. For me, it's a cool phone, but it's too expensive, and I don't need all the BlackBerry security features since I know exactly what I do on my Android phone and I. Don't need a third-party program telling me to watch out, although the camera is important to me, so I can't give the BlackBerry ago, but I do understand why people like it so hate it or love it. It's a phone that divides the masses.

Now I really hope that you have liked this video. If you did please like it and if you want to see more and support me, please subscribe and follow me on Instagram, as always guys, I'm Steven from tech magnet, and I'll catch you in the next one have a nice day.

Source : TechMagnet