BlackBerry KEY2 Rewind 2020: 2 Year Later - How Is It Holding Up? By TechOdyssey

Hey everybody welcome back to tech odyssey, so I'm back with another blackberry, video and, as you notice, there's a couple of things that are different here and not just the little astronaut guy behind me. This is my first video in my new studio, so other things coming new camera all that other stuff, but today we're here to talk about the blackberry ke2 in 2020 and how well it's holding up because it's coming up on two years now, so I want to take a look at it. Talk a little about performance. Talk about battery life, talk about some of the other aspects that go into the phone and see how it's holding up here now, two years later, but before we get into that, I do want to say if this is your first time stopping by the channel. I appreciate you being here if you enjoy the video, please hit the like, and the subscribe button and little notification bell, so you get updates when new videos come out now, let's talk about the key too all right, so the first thing I want to talk about is performance because, of course the phone is almost two years now. People want to know how it's still holding up in case.

You want to pick one up because, of course, the blackberry TCL license is expiring at the end of August. So that means this is it for right now, unless something magically is announced at the end of that licensing agreement. So if you were to pick up one of these today using a snapdragon, 660, android 8.1, how would you expect it to still work? Well, since I still use this one all the time, I can tell you that it works really well and in fact it works just as well as it did the day that I got my very first one two years ago, so I have the silver one, and then I have the black one right here and they both work. Well, uh with the snapdragon 660, you can do anything that you want to do, and one thing I want to talk about with this real quick is a lot of people are like. Oh it's, two years old.

Yes, but if you look at the average lifespan out of a blackberry and what a blackberry user gets out of it, two years is not that long, because there's still people using the PRI there's still people using to detect devices, there's still people using the classic. There are still people on legacy and blackberry 10. So having a phone, that's only two years old running, android 8.1. Isn't that big of a deal? And I get frustrated because I'm a big tech guy I mean I like using all phones, I like the latest and greatest operating systems, all those great things. So it frustrates me personally, but then, as I step back and look at things from a blackberry user perspective, which is something that I am, and I have been for a long time- it's okay, because we still have the great best in class keyboard, and you can still multitask.

You can still do everything that you want to do. You can use your banking apps. Furthermore, you can use Skype, you can use duo, you can use WhatsApp, you can play games, you can still type on this great capacitive keyboard. So no, I don't really feel like. There's been a drop-off at all and this phone should still be good for at least another two or three years, and that was an argument that people got into beforehand.

When blackberry kind of said yeah. We don't really feel the need to put out a phone every year, because the phone is good for two or three years before you even need to consider anything beyond that. So I don't think that there's a lot of a negative argument there and if you talk about android, 9 and android 10, those are niceties, but they're not niceties that we've ever experienced. So the conversation is still the same. Still android 8.1. Still the marvelous keyboard still the same experience.

You still got the convenience key. You can swipe flick and type and do all sorts of great things with keyboard. So this could still be a tremendous upgrade for a lot of people if you're using a legacy device if you're using blackberry, 10. This right here will blow all that stuff out of the water, and it'll. Do it really well, and you've still got the fingerprint sensor right there in the keyboard as well? Plus it's a sharp looking phone like, I said, the silver one, and then I've got the black one as well.

I wish I had the red one, the red one's crazy, crazy, expensive, though so I wouldn't even entertain that unless you're just an extreme blackberry enthusiast- and you want to pay a lot of money because people are asking an arm and a leg for them, so performance wise still runs as good as it did the day that it came out back in 2018. So I don't have any worries there, and I think that'll be perfectly fine for at least two or three years, so we've covered performance now. The next two things I want to talk about are durability and battery life on here is still fantastic. You still get all-day battery. You can even stretch it farther than that if you're, not.

Somebody like me who keeps the screen on all the time and ways that you can maximize the battery. Of course, as you can turn on adaptive battery sorry adaptive brightness, so you can lower the brightness and have it adjust based off of the lighting. So it doesn't burn that up as much. You can make sure you don't have a lot of things with like location settings running in the background. But overall the biggest thing is going to be screened on time, because screen on time is what burns up the battery the most, because it's got the screen on, and it's running things so 3500mah battery, combined with the snapdragon 660, is still going to get you at least six hours of screen on time, which is good it's on par, if not better than some phones that are out now I mean shoot when the pixel 4 and 4xl came out.

They were only getting like three and a half to five hours of screen on time. So they've, of course increased that with, like their adaptive battery learning your habits and some fine-tuning with the software, but 3 500 Williams of brute strength, is still perfect, especially with this 6 series, snapdragon processor and then with the 6 gigabytes of ram. Plus, it's not an overly big screen, 1080p resolution: it's not quad HD, there's, no ultra-fast refresh rates. This is just built to be a workhorse, and it's still being a workhorse two years after it's come out. So battery life is still good.

It'll still get you through the day and if you need to top it off, it's got quick charge 3.0, and you just pop the USB right there in the bottom, and you're good to go so battery life, good, uh performance, great, and it's funny, as I was actually playing Fortnite on it today. I know a lot of people that are using blackberries, probably don't care about Fortnite. I don't really honestly care about it much either, but it is a benchmark that people are familiar with. So you can play these 30 frames per second uh, and you can have it at 75, rendering low graphics quality, but it'll still run it. So I mean talking two years later and being able to run Fortnite well enough that you can semi enjoy playing.

It is kind of a big deal, so don't count this phone out yet, but if you do enjoy gaming, there are some good games on here like world of warships is a good one. You can play also um. What's up pub g is on here you can play pub g perfectly fine Call of Duty mobile, also another one that you can play. I mean all the other classics: altos odyssey boom beach, the ones that I've still been playing for years and years and years so yeah I mean in between battery life and performance. You can get some gaming out of this.

Of course, you've got picture-in-picture for using android if you're talking about profess iPhone is just now fixing to get picture and picture with iOS 14, and you've got it on your blackberry already so lots of things here. The only concern, of course, is that we don't have something new moving forward in the future, at least at this point in time. So yes, it's not a brand-new phone by any stretch of the imagination or unless, of course, you get a brand-new phone, but it's not brand new in sense of when it came out because it's a 2018 phone- and here we are in 2020 now. The next thing I want to talk about is durability. Now it's built on a metal frame, and it's got the rubberized back on it.

You've got the gorilla glass screen. Some people have complaints with the fingerprint sensor and the space bar. I have not actually had one that I've used for two years. I've had some that I've used about six months used for about a year. The space bar is still fine for me, but some people, I think that got those first generation ones, had some issues with the fingerprint sensor, maybe getting too loose, maybe not functioning properly.

It works on both of mine, so I've seen the rumors I've seen the complaints. There may be some legitimacy to them, but I have not experienced those personally, but it's built really well. Of course, blackberries for the most part have been built. Well, I know there were some quality control issues, especially with the key one. In the motion I know I had my key one.

My screen fell out the first week that I had it my motion. I got it brand new. The fingerprint sensor button wouldn't work straight out of the box, so I've had my frustrations with blackberry, mobile devices, but the key to other than the first generation that had some space bar and some overly click buttons. I find that it's been pretty good with these two second run devices that I've got so there is that, but otherwise and the rubber holds up nicely. I mean my blackberry little metal things are still in there to make the logo.

The camera still holds up well, uh, the best camera blackberry has ever had. It's got the dual 12 megapixel cameras. Of course, you can do your portrait shots and all that stuff, and surprisingly it works pretty good, especially if you get some ideal lighting. No, it's not the greatest in the world when it comes to like a s20, a s10 and iPhone 11, but those are more geared towards modern day photography and video, taking if you're a blackberry user. Those are probably not things that have been something that you've been really keen on.

You may be like me, and it's important to you, and I'm not saying that it shouldn't be important, but a lot of people that I talk to these blackberries are still using older phones. So if you come from a classic a passport, a PRI, something like that, this is going to be a really, really nice camera upgrade for you. So I think the camera's still fine durability. I think that it's still good, especially with this metal body. I haven't had any problems with it and if you're really worried about it get a case, and then you can also throw a screen protector on there as well just to keep your screen safe.

So I don't have one on my silver one, because I like to use it the unnatural way, but on my black one, I've got a case, and I've got a screen protector on it as well. So we talked about performance. We talked about battery threw in some gaming talked about durability. Now. The last thing I want to talk about is security.

Updates, that's going to be a little of a question mark moving forward, but of course it's been a question mark for blackberries for a very long time, because most of them don't get security updates anymore, especially the older ones. So the last security update on here was in March. I think we're going to get another one before the licensing agreement ends just to send everybody out on a high note. Maybe something will come along if there's like an emergency like an exploit that comes along, maybe that might be something that blackberry mobile still do they're still supposed to offer support for up to two years, we're required by law after the agreement ends whatever the world. That means um, but maybe if there's like an emergency thing that exploits the hardware on the phone there might could be something I can't even commit to saying that I'm just saying maybe, but the march security update and for a two-year-old device is actually still pretty good.

I'm surprised that they supported it this long, especially once they said that they were terminating the licensing agreement so moving forward. I think we're in the middle of July now I think, we'll see a farewell security patch before blackberry, mobile, sails off into the sunset, and then we're just left with the devices, and you know everybody moves off into the future. So beyond that, though, it's still pretty secure, it's been probably the most secure android phone that you can get for the longest time got to detect security software on there. That's always going to be there. So if you have detected turned on, you have all that stuff.

It'll tell you when things are trying to get access to permissions on your phone it'll tell you if you're opening yourself up to different vulnerabilities, so you're still going to have that stuff, and it's still going to be very secure, but in the event that there's just some stuff that by attrition isn't kept up with anymore, and I'm not a security expert. When it comes to the software stuff, just based off my own experience, it should be fine. I've never had any problems. Personally, don't download stuff, you don't know the source, all the same things that really we don't have a lot really that we have a lot of control over, because it's just like. If you email on your computer, don't open stuff, you don't know, don't go to websites or insecure and usually get notifications.

So I think overall the security is still going to be okay, but over time it's just going to degrade just like it has with other passwords versions of android, which are no longer supported, so android 8 should be supported for a long time, and that's the last thing I want to talk about is longevity. With longevity, you got to worry about how long this device is going to be good in the future. Well, seeing as the PRI came out in like 2015 and is still floating around along now. Here we are five years later um, I believe 2015, so many numbers in my head, but moving forward. That's still running android uh lollipop, which still has support, and you can still use a lot of apps, so using android 8, which a lot of devices still aren't even on android 10.

, most of the flagship ones are, but some mid-range ones are still on android 9. If they haven't come out in the last year, you're going to be able to use everything on this device for a long time, and that's not something that I'm overly worried about, maybe two or three years down the road you might have to worry about it, a little more but as of right now. I think that you'll be perfectly all right and considering how there's still a lot of people asking me how to side load. What's happened on the blackberry 10, the fact that you can still use that on here, along with everything else, is an indicator that it'll be good for quite some time. So I wouldn't worry about that.

We'll readdress this in 2021 and 2022, but I think it's still going to be okay for quite a while. So that's all I have on this video. I just wanted to take a minute and address some of these things, because it's not a review. It's really talking about how the device is still performing what I expect out of it, how much longer it's going to be good and what you can expect if a're, using one or b you're looking to get one still now they're very expensive to pick up on the reseller market, the ke2 LE is still going to last you just as long. It still has the same security updates as this has, so it may still get one as well on the way out the door, but the ke2 LE is probably the best least expensive, uh android blackberry.

That's out there right now, that's still gonna! Last you a while so the key2 and the key2le still going to be golden for a couple of years, enjoy it continue to hammer away on your physical keyboard and don't worry about it and, let's just see what the future brings us, but that's all I have on this video, hopefully you've enjoyed it. Hopefully it's been helpful and insightful for you and if you have any questions or comments, of course, always please leave them down in the comment section, I will get back with you and hopefully, you've enjoyed this. Hopefully, you've enjoyed the new background and the setting, hopefully the echo, hasn't been too bad. I've got some wall tiles. I put up on the wall still trying to get the sound proofing down in here, but this is my first video in the new uh space, and I've got a lot of cool things coming down the pipeline.

It's fixing to get really exciting, so hopefully I'll stay tuned for that as well, but as always thanks for watching. I appreciate you being here, and I'll see you guys next time.

Source : TechOdyssey