BlackBerry KEYone Review By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review and here's something I don't get to say that often anymore, here's a blackberry, smartphone, yes, indeed, folks they are still around while sort of actually TCL a Chinese company makes phones. They license the name with work with blackberry, ? under the name blackberry mobile, now to make the occasional Android smartphone. So it's not running a blackberry OS. Anything like that is Android. Just like keep the blackberry print, which is fine. This has a palm Lea, more practical and unified design.

Here it actually has a keyboard exposed at all times, not unlike the blackberry classic, but it's certainly a lot higher in and more modern and the best part is not just the fact that it is unlocked, and it's both GSM and CDMA, so T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, so Sprint will have their own they'll be selling it in the summer. The best part is that the price is good. It's $549 unlocked no contract, no payments, the print was kind of expensive. It was a little of a hard sell there because it was priced as high as the fanciest and the best of the flagships, but the hardware maybe wasn't quite all the way there definitely better. Now we're look at it now so right off the bat I have to say this is a good-looking phone in a kind of modern, almost futuristic Porsche design, blackberry, inspired, sort of way kind of on the masculine side, but you've got metal.

You got glass, you got that nice. Looking QWERTY keyboard with the guitar fret kind of dividers in between it looks like quality stuff. It feels like quality stuff. In fact, for a four point: five inch display phone. It feels kind of heavy it's about as heavy as well, something like the pixel XL, which is a pretty weighty, phone-ins, iPhone, 7 plus, when it's in its case I, like this drippy kind of finish here and distinctly blackberries I've been doing that kind of stippled or textured black surfaces back in the days of the blackberry ball with the leather kind of backing on this, because it's easy to grip, it's easy to hold onto it, does show fingerprints that much either so good times there.

Unfortunately, you don't get anything like wireless charging here. Those in spite the fact that we don't have its looks like a metal back as far as I know there is metal under there you can see. We have a two-tone: LED flash and a 12 megapixel camera on the back blackberry camera that doesn't just outright think now. Here's our front 8 megapixels, selfie camera and our video chat camera view. This is a business-minded phone right, you're, not just selfie, and this here has this giant window really is probably just for visual symmetry and things like the proximity sensor and stuff are underneath there and there's our little LED indicator for messages, because one business messaging phone doesn't have an LED indicator.

Obviously you got your piece there, and we have on-screen navigation buttons and the hardware keyboard, which is what you're going to use 24/7 on this. Not a software keyboard does support gestures for navigation notice right there, that's kind of cool, it's actually useful, I like that, and you can assign shortcuts to all of these keys. So you can become a real wizard launching applications and doing things while you're at it. There's a convenience key on the side, and you press it and tell you can assign it to whatever application you would like so handy again. The keyboard feels sort of like a cross between the classic and the print closer to the classic, adjust in terms of fact that it's always exposed it's not underneath the slider and when you're using it, the phone feels more balanced.

As a result, the Drive was always kind of an awkward top-heavy thing, because the slider design, the keys, are they're kind of a little. Waterfall shaped here, they're, quite slippery. That's one thing now me: I have moved on I used in the day to love blackberry keyboards and long ago, the days of the bold and the pearl, but I've gotten so used to the on-screen software keyboards that I'm actually a lot slower using this, but for those of you who are still using hardware, keyboards well, you'll, probably like it, and we have the space bar here. That is also the fingerprint scanner which works quite well. This is running Android, 7.1.1 nugget right, that's nice right out of the box, forget the latest version of Android, and it has all the blackberry, customizations I, don't think it was bloatware junk I think that they're pretty good stuff, if you're a blackberry person- and you have things like me- about your Google Assistant right here- to build in started, trying to figure out what I'm saying and if you've got notifications or anything like that, I, don't at the moment, you'll see a little red asterisk on the top of the application, where that's appropriate, just like in the days of old blackberry stuff. So you also got your handy dandy little Productivity panel here now, so you've got events.

You've got your calendar stuff. You've got your messages popping up there and, of course it has blackberry hub which pulls in Facebook Twitter. All your email accounts text messages into one. You can get redundant notifications with that, though, so you probably want to either use the hub or turn off the individual applications. Notifications I find hub gets a little cluttered than busy, so I haven't been as much of a fan of it.

I thought it would be now when it comes to the phone size, you can see it's bigger than the Samsung Galaxy S, a which is a relatively speaking, petite phone, despite its very large screen size thanks to the aspect ratio. It's also a bit thicker, it's more like the size of a 5.5 inch phone, here's, my Google Pixel XL, and we're getting to be about the same size. We put them on top of each other. That's pretty close and sewing like the LG, G 6 and sit also is fairly petite. Well, you get the idea.

It's going to be a little smaller as well right there and the iPhone, 7 plus being a big phone right here is one of the biggest footprints for a 5.5 inch phone. You can see it is a little smaller than that, so it definitely has a footprint of a larger phone, despite the 4.5 inch display, which, by the way, obviously is portrait orientation and the home screen and stays this way you can rotate it this way to watch videos, and obviously it's slightly weird and slightly awkward, because you have a keyboard over here, but it still it works and games, work, and you'll see playing asphalt, 8 and that's just fine as well, but I blackberry mobile, says. Well, you know you're getting actually more usable screen real estate when the keyboard is deployed software keyboard on any other Android phone, because that takes up a good deal of space, otherwise, obviously you're not going to get the same screen real estate here, the IPS display has a three-to-two are really more like 2 to 3, given the portrait orientation aspect ratio. That resolution is 1080 by 1620 an unusual resolution, but I really haven't run into problems with any programs using it. They all seem to scale and handle it.

Just fine inside we're talking mid-range e stuff. It's got a 2 gigahertz Snapdragon 625. Let's knock outscore CPU with arena 506 graphics. This is marketed as a phone for a business people for messaging people, not for those who want to play games and play videos all day. Long though it's perfectly capable of playing videos other than the fact.

The screen is a little, certainly smaller than normal for videos, and you do have to hold it in awkward, landscape orientation. You get the idea. This is for those who send texts and emails all day, the Kim Kardashian's of the world, who still love their BlackBerry's more so than what the smartphone's become for a lot of people, which is a pocket, entertainment device. So, like I said, it's pretty capable see, asphalt, 8 going right here. The phone has three gigs of RAM and 32 gigs of internal storage, plus a micros card slot compatible with cards up to 256 gigs, which is reasonably decent, certainly and for the price I'm cool, then, for the purpose that it's made for I haven't seen it lag, I haven't seen it slowed down and BlackBerry's customizations here are, generally speaking fairly light.

They have their own customized, PIM apps, for example, BBM, which is also available on iOS and any Android phone now, but it's all productivity minded stuff. Of course, they do have a few other features like DEC for security can warn you about application permissions, and it has a screen shade feature which seems I, don't know. Kind of slightly points was too maybe but say, and in the interest of security. Blackberry so far has been good about issuing the monthly security updates for Android devices, and they said it's going to continue here now in terms of major OS upgrades I, don't know the Privy hasn't gotten the latest Android OS yet, and they haven't said anything about this, so I don't know if you're going to be seeing Android Oh on this one, it's available or not. On the multimedia front, though, the camera is pretty darn good, it's reasonably intuitive.

Here you got your flash control. You got your time or your aspect ratio. Your HDR, which is by default on auto, swapping your camera's switching to video modes' mode. Does that there you go slow motion, video panning panorama. The only thing I notice is that it doesn't really pre focus particularly much so sometimes, if you're shooting a fast-moving subject like your kin or our cat, or something like that.

You might actually miss the extra special moment, but the image quality from the 12 megapixel camera with an F 2.0 lens, is pretty decent. It's not going to beat out the pixel. SLR is Samsung Galaxy phone, but you can see those pictures here, we'll put some big versions on here. It's pretty good, even the 1080p video recording from the rear camera is pretty decent, though I found that looked a little jerky and stabilization was certainly noticeably better on 1080p video. So, finally, we have a blackberry here with a camera that actually is very enjoyable and usable and the megapixel front.

Camera is certainly sufficient for your video chat, use and pretty resolve. These two is pretty decent stuff, and you can do 1080p video, the camera by the way uses a Sony sensor, and it has 1.5 5 micron pixel, sights, which is comparable to some 2016 high-end Android phones and on the software sets it apart, and the software is probably known sophisticated here, given the fact that the image quality is good, but not as awesome as it is some other phones, it's still pretty decent stuff. Here, has a USB connector for charging. It also supports USB on-the-go. For those you want to plug in peripherals like SD card flash drives, that sort of thing speaker and microphone on the bottom, pretty loudspeaker actually and pretty clear and by my voice quality on this.

We tested this on T-Mobile and on AT&T. Again it will also work on Sprint Verizon loud and clear. Blackberry has always been a good voice. Phone that hasn't changed, and a headphone jack is up top. Some people are going to love that some people are going to hate.

If I'm good with it, and this is where our NATO SIM card slot and micro SD card slot are so the 3500 William battery 3505 to be exact, sealed inside obviously the unibody kind of design phone, and it supports Qualcomm trick-trick charge 3.0. This is an energizer bunny, which is in the spirit of blackberries of old and, of course, we're not having something like near e-ink, looking display of all blackberries you're, its regular old IPS. But it's not a big piece of glass. It's not a very fast CPU. The resolution is not super-duper.

High battery is quite large in this, so it's really, really impressive. With moderate use, I really couldn't kill this in less than a day and a half I think it's going to last most people, probably two days on in charge. It's really that good. So that's the BlackBerry key one, and you know as Android phones ago, it's certainly unique you're not going to look like every other person on the block using an Android phone or certainly not like an iPhone. That said, I think the Cortes day as come and gone for a lot of people, but not for all people.

So for those of you who are still fond of having a little hardware keyboard down here. Well there, it is its a really actually a very nice phone, mid-range CPU power, but it gets the job done, and you saw play asphalt. Eight just fine, some cameras, even whoever thought I get to say blackberry was a nice camera. It's a decent camera there front and back. Is one nice build and look some? They did a good job and I think the market for this kind of phone at this point is a bit limited, but my stuff I'm using for mobile tag, review, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more cool tech, videos and thumbs up.

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Source : MobileTechReview