Blackb Blackberry Keyone
Phone for button pushers everywhere
It’s hard to think of a brand with a more confused history than Blackberry. In the 1990s, it let cutting-edge high-flyers get urgent emails on the move. From 2003, it was the corporate smartphone of choice. In 2008 we learned Barack Obama used one. By 2011, it was the official mobile of urban youth, its QWERTY keypad enabling eyes-free texting from inside hoodie pockets.
In 2013 this became less appealing when Edward Snowden revealed that the intelligence services had access to texts and emails sent between Blackberrys. And today the Canadian company (previously called RIM, now known simply as as Blackberry Ltd) is struggling to keep a toe-hold in the mobile-phone market. But here’s the latest straw it’s clutching: the Keyone, named to draw attention to the tiny buttons that hark back to the glory days.
Despite its self-consciously retro design, with a textured black plastic rear and silver aluminium frame, the Keyone is an up-to-date device running Android 7.1 (Nougat). Its keypad features a space bar that doubles as a fingerprint sensor, and above it is a high-resolution touchscreen. It could be brighter, but it covers 96.5 per cent of the SRGB colour range. At 4.5in it’s on the small side, but if your fingers are slim enough to hit the tiny buttons accurately, your hands may be too small to handle more fashionable big-screen mobiles. Disappointingly, the phone itself isn’t particularly compact, partly because of the keyboard, and at nearly a centimetre thick it feels old-fashioned in the wrong way.
The Keyone has similar problems on the inside: its processor is slower than those of most other phones in its price bracket, leaving some tasks feeling stuttery. The battery, charged via USB Type-c, lasted 12 hours 24 minutes in our video-playback test, which is just about OK. However, in general use we found it lasted longer than expected, beating even the likes of Google’s £720 Pixel XL.
Cameras haven’t been a strong point in previous models, but the Keyone’s rear 12- megapixel sensor (made by Sony) gave us crisp pictures outdoors. In low light or with moving subjects, things got very blurry.
Exclusive messaging services once made Blackberry unique, but this is now basically just another Android phone. If you find touchscreens hard to use, the tactile keyboard could make it suitable, if slightly overpriced for its specification. Otherwise, it’s hard to recommend over alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy S7 (£499 from John Lewis www.snipca. com/24398) or the cheaper Honor 8 Pro (see page 26). VERDICT: We’re glad to see physical buttons are still an option, but in other respects this isn’t a particularly good phone
★★★☆☆
ALTERNATIVE: Nokia 3310 (2017) £60 The return of an old favourite, beforere smartphones ruled thee world. Look out for our revieww of this in our next issue
Now just another Android phone – albeit with physical keys for touch typists