BlackBerry KeyOne - Hands On Review By Digital Trends

Everyone is Julian from Digital, Trends, and I'm here with BlackBerry's latest smartphone. It's the key one, and it's notable because it's one of the few Android smartphones you can get these days with the physical keyboard, but we have to remember that blackberry isn't actually making this phone. The company has a partnership agreement with TCL, a Chinese manufacturer, and they're making the phones, but blackberry is handling all the software. So everything you see here, software wise is coming from blackberry. That includes monthly security updates and just any Android updates in general as well. So regardless it still has to be met with certain design, restrictions and guidelines that TCL has to follow so that BlackBerry maintains that sort of standard of durability, long battery life- and you know just having a good phone with a good keyboard.

So it has a 1080p screen, but it has a 4.5 inch display and that's tiny, but it was necessary because they wanted to fit that keyboard right there. So really you're not going to buy this phone unless you want to miss a physical keyboard. That's the key feature here, and you know no pun intended. So it has a physical keyboard right here: power button on the Left volumes, rocker on the right and a convenience key which we've seen on previous Deter Blackberry phones but 5660 in the D Tech 50, and you have a USB-C charging port on the bottom and a headphone jack at the top. What's really neat is that this has a 3500 5 million power Scattered and that's surprisingly, long-lasting in our testing.

We used it for a full day and I ended at midnight and I came up with 40% left and I haven't really seen that in the smartphone for a long time. So this can definitely get you through more than a day. It's also powered by Qualcomm snapdragon 625 processors, which isn't the most powerful chip, and it is a little dated at this point, but it's still helping this phone get massive battery life and that's always a plus. You get 32gb of storage, but the good thing is: there's also a micro SD card slot. So you can expand -.

However much you want so blackberries t1 runs Android 7.1.1, which is the most recent version of Android and, as you can see, it also has the latest security patch level and that's because lac to really prides itself on security and what once itself to do you? The best and no other manufacturer, really follows through with every month security patches from Google. But it's nice to see that someone is, and that's always a plus, but as you can see, it's incredibly close to stock android. In fact, I believe it is stock android. You can get all the features you get with nougats, including notification bundling and only thing. Only differences really come in here wages.

These, let some slight tweaks to the afterword and some slight tweaks to the overview button. Where you can see they have this different layout. I believe you can change it to your liking, but you know I actually kind of like this different style better. Unfortunately, there are a ton of pre-installed apps, but they're all BlackBerry apps. So if you're buying BlackBerry device, you probably expect that you can expect the same things as blackberry hub, which is a sort of app that shows all your notifications coming in from all your different apps, which is actually kind of neat.

If you want to just have one specification system and check out everything and of course, there's the VM messenger. If you wanted to you know message other people and of course there are security apps as well I believe there's an app called Tech by blackberry and this sort of gives an overall check up on your phone just to make sure your security is fine and that those things like check the view of a screen. Stick a screen lock and check the apps consistently to make sure everything. You're downloading is secure, but the real important feature here is the keyboard and as we see it, the QWERTY keyboard, and it's surprisingly not too bad to type in. Let's actually jump into Google.

Keep here. Hi bear to digital trends. So it's really slow, of course, for anyone transitioning to a button layout from a smartphone or a touchscreen. Smartphone might take some time to pick this up. But of course, again with time, I'm sure I will get faster and anyone who's using this phone for longer than a couple of days will it will definitely get faster, but again you have to get used to it, and it's really up to personal preference.

If you prefer keyboards to touchscreen keyboards, because sometimes you know it works well other times. I can I really, for example, miss swipe gestures where I could just easily move around the keyboard and type things, but the fact that I get to press physical Keys is also kind of nice in a way I'm, not sure if that makes sense, but it just sometimes give you a nicer feeling in a more final feeling when you're typing, in other words and making sure you know what you're pressing this keyboard here contains some faculty members to do some gestures, so I can delete words just by swiping left like that, unfortunately, I don't think I can undo that, but you also have some other neat features like, for example. If I wanted to move three letters, one of the other cool things you can do is assign the shortcuts to each and every key here. So, for example, I've set G to open Google and you can even long press to set it. Something else like Gmail same applies to any other key, just to press that, for example, this is mapped at Facebook I.

Don't think I've said anything if I long press it. But if you haven't, you can always pull this up here, where you can choose either an app that starts with F, for example, or you can do other shortcuts like right here, like sending a message to someone or other shortcuts that you can see here and that's actually a really neat feature, because finding apps doesn't feel as fast, because I would have to quickly tap there to search something and for being using. This keyboard is again, is a little slow so having the ability to just quickly press something that I'm looking for like G for Google. It's really nice, and I think it's one of the best features of this keyboard. But if you press and hold this button, you get access to emojis to Flipboard settings and voice typing, so voice typing naturally lets you type with your voice, which, as in the typical Google, account settings, and if you try that again connects with your Flipboard and again, you can access some, oh gee, so you're not completely reliant on emoticons or using a standard emoji.

You would try and use here. You have also access to all these Android emojis. Take them to people, so there's a virtual keyboard that you can actually toggle on. If you so desire there, you go so obviously a little redundant there, perhaps a little unnecessary. But of course, if you wanted to type something there you go, it works just as well again, you are seeing a lot less than you should, but it's certainly there.

The camera at the top is an 8 megapixel camera and on the back you have 12 megapixels, and it's surprisingly good, take a look at a picture. I said last night: it was pretty good for low-light shot. There wasn't a lot of light. There see the details are little fuzzy but, to be honest, I wasn't really expecting much out of the BlackBerry camera, but I'm a little surprised, but that's a good thing. It is fact that it could take stuff like this.

It's kind of nice, so one other thing I wanted to address. Is that there's so little that you get to see in this screen, because it's so small, you know coming from a phone like the Galaxy S8, which is conveniently right here. You get to see so much when you look at the screen just in terms of content. You know you can see everything that you want and there's just so much more that you can see. I have to make everything smaller on this phone, because I just wasn't able to see a lot.

I would see maybe a few Twitter posts at a time when we go to Twitter I can see two tweets which it ends limits. Certainly what you can see on the screen at any given time, but that's just something to note in case you want it, or you enjoy using your phone for consuming a lot of content, especially watching videos. For example. It's just a little weird watching it when you know you have this giant thing on the side, for example, let's click on that. So it's certainly not terrible, but it's always for me at least it's bizarre having this little addition here, and I'm watching it like this.

It just feels very compact and- and you can see, the aspect ratio is also a little weird, because this is in the standard 1920 by 1080p resolution. So there's no other real reason to buy this phone other than the people. There are a lot of others, cheaper, Android phones with better or similar specs and ones that, of course, offer vibrant bright displays. So really it all comes down to the keyboard and if you sort of having that Blackberry brand in your life, so if that's who you are $500450, this is a pretty decent smartphone, but for anyone else, they're just looking for the next smartphone to upgrade I. Don't think this is the right.

Source : Digital Trends