BlackBerry Keyone Review By 9to5Google

Smartphones have evolved a lot, but sometimes we just can't help but want to take a step back and enjoy the days of old blackberry is a brand that everyone remembers, but hardly anyone still uses the company tried to make a comeback in 2016, but we were left wanting more in the Drive. Now we have the BlackBerry key one: a physical keyboard touting Android smartphone that feels like it was ripped right out of the late-2000s. Is it worth your hard-earned dollar I'm Ben with nine-to-five Google and let's take a closer look. The blackberry ki1 is a smartphone that I couldn't wait to try out after I, first messed with it at CES 2017 in the time, since the hardware hasn't changed. Much at all. That's a perfect thing, though, as the key one is a very hefty smartphone.

That feels great in the hand thanks to the drippy rubber on the rear and the industrial design of the phone is also excellent. There are click buttons all around and welcomed features like USB see charging and the headphone jack up top I also really love the silver and black color scheme, and never once while using the key one that I feel like it was fragile in any way at all, but really that's how a blackberry should feel, and it's one of the main areas that the company nailed with this device now flipping the phone over. We get a look at the 4.5 inch display, which sounds tiny, but it doesn't feel that way to accommodate the keyboard below blackberry trim down the height of the display, a fair bit, but I don't feel as though anything was lost. With this sure. A few apps don't play super nice with it, but for the most part it works, and the display quality is also pretty good.

Even if the brightness is a bit on the low side. Now under that display is the physical keyboard and that's really the main selling point of the key one. Blackberry says that this is a phone meant for the keyboard warrior, not for the multimedia user. In that aspect, the company did a pretty great job in delivering a keyboard that feels like the phone's. So many of us have used in the past now, there's certainly a learning curve when it comes to using this keyboard versus one that you've used on-screen desperate now the keys themselves are click and the layout feels pretty natural, and I love.

How well-thought-out the flick gestures for autocomplete and the embedded fingerprint sensor in the space bar both work. The only thing I really didn't like about this layout, though, was the capacitive navigation buttons right above the keyboard, which I would regularly hit by mistake while typing. Now the main question I really had to ask myself while using the key one and the one I still do is this: is this better than an on-screen keyboard? Answering that really isn't all that easy? Well, I, absolutely love the tactile feedback that this keyboard provides. I, really can't say that I'm quicker on it than I am on a virtual keyboard to at least not yet. The bigger issue, though, comes with one-handed use and the one's keyboard just doesn't work all that.

Well there. It was clearly designed with two hands in mind. Really the keyboard on this phone is what will decide if it's worth buying for you. You have to really love typing on your phone and basically doing nothing else to love the key one. This is really the area where I kept looking back at the BlackBerry Drive and kept being reminded how much the company got right with that form factor now.

As far as the software is concerned, the key one ships with Android 7.1.1 and the latest security patch, with the promise of future updates and a perfect track record with that blackberry. Software is also good with some productivity features like the hub, certainly coming in handy from time to time, but it all comes down to performance, and this is an area where the key one really struggles now running. The show is the Snapdragon 625 and three gigs of ram, which is plenty for a speedy Android experience, but due to very poor, optimization and RAM management, the key one commonly kicks apps out of memory and lags it's a shame, but it's something that can also be fixed in updates. In the meantime, though, this is the first phone that I couldn't get through the review period completely using because it's just too slow now. Security, of course, is a big part of blackberry, and it's really front and center on the key one.

There are numerous security adjustments behind the scenes and apps like D, Tech and privacy shade help out the end user with keeping their phone secure. The key one also packs a 12 megapixel camera on the rear, which, on paper, should be great since the exact same sensor as the Google Pixel. In practice, though, it's not quite as good, don't get me wrong. It's an excellent camera that is really capable of taking some excellent shots, but it's not quite as good as the pixel, and it suffers a bit in a little light. Really I attribute most of the issues with the camera with this on software, which can be fixed now.

As for the battery life, the key one is a Muenster apex, a massive 3,500 5 million power battery and on these specs that offers up predictably solid results, pushing hours of screen on time over long days of use, there's also quit surge 3.0 and a special boost mode for charging. The phone up. The key one unit I've been using has been a pre-production unit, and I'm, really hoping that that's the cause of some of the issues I've been having for one. My unit just doesn't want to stay connected to T-Mobile at all. Foam regularly drop signal in areas that lack strong coverage where other phones on T-Mobile have done fine, but really, at the end of the day, the BlackBerry t1 isn't a bad phone.

It's just not for everyone. It brings a lot of things that everyone would love like great battery life, secure software and an excellent fingerprint sensor. Most people I think, would also enjoy the physical keyboard to an extent, but having it there all the time. Just isn't the strategy. I think blackberry needs to go for the key.

One will do well with the people who still want a blackberry, but it's not going to be the home run that the company needs and like it used to have. If you want to learn more about the BlackBerry key one, to get the link in the description to our full written review. Until next time, I've been with magnified Google at Nexus been on Twitter thanks for watching.

Source : 9to5Google