BlackBerry KeyOne
At last, the phone that keyboard warriors have been waiting for
Iknow what you’re thinking: is BlackBerry still going? This, after all, is a brand that saw its market share shrink to almost exactly zero in Gartner’s last numbers. But there are still people who love having a phone with a keyboard. They’re like an underground resistance, fighting the good fight against the world of onscreen keyboards.
The BlackBerry KeyOne is designed to be their one true device. Although this isn’t really a BlackBerry at all: it’s made by TCL, but runs BlackBerry’s software layered on top of Android 7.1 (the company is also committing to issuing Google’s monthly patches on time, which is promising). There are BlackBerry features such as BBM and BlackBerry Hub, which means it has all the business and enterprise features that make the Canadian company popular with big corporates.
It’s also a pretty good handset to hold in your hand. It’s offered in matte
silver or black aluminium and has a 4.5in, 3:2 aspect ratio screen with a resolution of 1,620 x 1,080, made from Gorilla Glass 4. And there’s a 12-megapixel camera on the rear (based on a Sony-manufactured sensor) with phase-detect autofocus, a bright aperture of f/2 and a dual-LED flash.
I rather like the rounded edges and textured, soft-touch plastic back, and while the phone is a little light, it’s definitely the most eye-catching BlackBerry since the Priv. More importantly, it’s a phone that begs to be used one-handed, due to its handily narrow profile.
What the KeyOne certainly isn’t, though, is a flagship smartphone for 2017. It runs a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor instead of one of Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line processors, has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Still, the phone felt responsive in use, and the positive implication of this decision is that it should be more power-efficient than most, especially when coupled with the highcapacity 3,505mAh battery. The Moto Z Play offers a similar combination of battery and processor, and that phone achieved among the best battery-life results we’ve ever seen.
So what about the feature that really sets this phone apart: the physical keyboard? I’m sad to say it’s not quite what you expect if you’ve been brought up on BlackBerry’s own keyboards of the past.
The click of each domed key is positive, but it’s a little soft and rubbery in feel – a long way from the hard, plastic keys of old. And yet I found it easy enough to type on quickly when I tried it out at the BlackBerry stand. The keys are nicely separated and the spacebar doubles as a fingerprint reader, which is a clever idea.
If you still hanker after a phone with a keyboard, the BlackBerry KeyOne is definitely worth of consideration, although when it ships (hopefully imminently) it will cost a hefty $549.