BlackBerry KEY2 Review By Engadget

Android-Powered blackberries have been around for a few years now, but they've only recently started to feel like blackberries consider last year's blackberry key one. It was about as niche as a smartphone could get, but its blend of a physical keyboard, a classic design and some smart software was enough to get longtime fans really excited again. This year's key to is even better. It's an improvement over the original in just about every way and blackberry. Diehards should probably just go, buy one right now. Everyone else, though, should keep watching now.

If you want to basically hear me drool over the key twos design, you should watch our hands-on video all I'll say now is that TCL took the key ones, look and gave it a much-needed dose of sleekness and modernity. Not everyone, I've shown the phone to agrees with me and your own mileage may vary, but this thinner, more angular design, I'm just crazy about it. More importantly, the phone runs noticeably faster than the key one, courtesy of Qualcomm's snapdragon, 616 chipsets and six gigs of RAM I'd obviously still recommend something with a bit more horsepower. If you're trying to play some fortnight, but very little, I threw at the phone over two weeks managed to produce any hiccups and hey the extra power here makes multitasking feel excellent, but more on that later, some things haven't changed too much. There's still an adequate, but unexcited 4.5 inch, LCD screen here, along with a headphone jack, a convenience key on the right side and either 64 or 128 gigs of internal storage that you can augment with a micro SD card, perhaps best of all there's a 3,500 William hour battery inside that is easily seen me through to full work days before needing a charge on more quiet days, like I, don't know over the weekends the key to actually gets close to three days of use. This is obviously a very, very good thing, and it hardens back to the days when BlackBerry's can be relied on to last for ages before needing a recharge.

Now, you're, probably here to learn more about the BlackBerry key twos keyboard, and let me just tell you now: fantastic: the keys are bigger than the key ones in the flat or key caps make taping a breeze. That is once you find the best way to balance the phone in your hands. We usually try to write our full BlackBerry reviews on the blackberries themselves, and we usually fall short I'm, not gonna, lie and tell you. I wrote everything on a key too, but I wrote a lot of it and I don't think it was time wasted. It was a pleasure I just needed to be able to write a little faster.

There's a new speed key here too, which lets you access all of your meticulously created keyboard shortcuts, while you're still inside other apps, try doing that on a key one. This is the first new button. Blackberry is added to the keyboard in years, and it makes multitasking on the keys. You feel spectacular. If you really wanted to you, could assign two shortcuts to each of the key to the letter buttons that makes for 52 possible shortcuts.

You can access whenever you need them. Needless to say, the keyboard makes the key to one of my favorite phones ever for actually getting stuff done. The keyboard obviously isn't for everyone. Now. Here's the big question after living with the BlackBerry keeps you for two weeks: could I give up on touchscreens and learn to live with this physical keyboard? Sure I totally could after half a month of trying, however I'm still just not as fast on these keys as I am swiping out messages on a big glass touchscreen, that's obviously not a knock on TCL or blackberries in general.

This keyboard is amazing. It's just for everyone. Considering the change. You should really keep that real learning curve in mind now, as usual, TCL gussied-up android 8.1 Oreo, with some really helpful security tools considered detect the app that gives you an at-a-glance understanding of how secure your phone is. It now generates notifications to let you know when apps try to access sensors on your device, like the phone's camera or the microphone or even your location.

Needless to say, I discovered a few apps pinging, these sensors, a little more than I, was comfortable with and then there's blackberry Locker, which is meant to house all of your sensitive files on the key -. You can finally stick apps in there ? and even better. You can prevent those apps from appearing in the launcher altogether, just in case you're working with some software. Furthermore, you really don't want other people to know about, and then there is the dual camera. It's the first, such camera ever squeezed into a blackberry and while it does occasion come in handy I can't help, but think a very good single camera might have been the better choice here.

Let's back up for a second, though, the key to uses a pair of 12 megapixel sensors, one with an F, 1.8, aperture and another with an F 2.6 aperture, that's meant to be used as a zoom. You'll, probably get the most use out of that main camera, since it's noticeably better at sucking up light, which leads to better brighter photos. Overall, the on by default, HDR mode, only helps matters giving photos an extra dose of Verve and dynamism for a blackberry, which remember, is the kind of phone that literally no one has ever equated with great image. Quality. That's not bad.

The secondary camera, meanwhile only really comes into play when you want to get in really tight on your subject or when you want to snap some bouquet filled portraits photos taken with that. Zoom camera generally aren't quite as nice as photos captured from the main one though, and it can be especially lousy in low-light. Sadly, that's a trait that isn't unique to just that one camera. Sometimes the phone can churn out respectable shots at when it's dim other times the resulting dark photos can be almost puzzling bad. The fact that neither camera has optical image stabilization really doesn't help things here when the conditions are right, I'd be mostly pleased to use.

The BlackBerry keeps you as my main camera as it stands, though, this inconsistent low-light performance is a real bummer. All toll I think the BlackBerry keeps you is the best Android power blackberry, I've ever used, and the company's focus on security and transparency feels like what we just need more of these days. If you were never a blackberry person before, though you probably won't find much here to change your mind, that said for the right people, people who long for physical keyboards and want a phone. That's mindful of what happens with the data on it. The key to just might be the right device at the right time.

Source : Engadget