Over the previous three or 4 years, BlackBerry has tried a number of completely different methods within the wild hope that one thing will work. We have seen candybars and sliders; touchscreens and keyboards; funds and ultra-premium; conventional and experimental; BlackBerry OS and Android. Each time the corporate appeared to be transferring in a single course, it might reverse course. You’ll be able to examine every of those missteps in nice element in our evaluation of the BlackBerry Z3 (Review), Passport (Review), Classic (Review), Leap (Review), Priv (Review), and DTEK50 (Review). In tracing that journey, you may see how the corporate tried desperately to draw new customers, then settled for clinging to its dwindling fanbase after which lastly gave up all hope.

BlackBerry now licenses its title and its software program to different corporations. TCL – which holds the rights for a lot of the world excluding India, Indonesia, and some different Asian markets the place the model remains to be standard – launched its first BlackBerry product, the KEYone, earlier this . In India, the rights have been acquired by Optiemus Infracom, a reputation which may not instantly be acquainted. Nevertheless, this firm has a whole lot of historical past within the Indian telephone house. Based on Optiemus, it offered India’s first cell phone again in 1995, and it now operates the Univercell retail chain and Zen brand of phones.

Optiemus is now promoting the identical KEYone in India, with a couple of modifications. The primary few batches are made by TCL and imported, however the firm is planning to ramp up its personal design and manufacturing operations in India quickly, in a three way partnership with Taiwan’s Wistron. Now we have the Indian model of the KEYone with us at this time, in a restricted version black end. Here is our full evaluate.

BlackBerry KEYone design
Clearly, the principle attraction of this telephone is its bodily keyboard. BlackBerry (or ought to we are saying TCL) is among the solely main Android producers to even experiment with keyboards, which is a disgrace as a result of there could possibly be an actual marketplace for telephones that break the usual touchscreen mould. The keyboard appears a bit squashed proper on the backside of the telephone, and it’s undoubtedly compressed when in comparison with those on basic BlackBerrys. In a intelligent transfer, BlackBerry has built-in a fingerprint sensor into the spacebar. It is the pure place for a Residence button, and we discovered ourselves urgent it by chance on a regular basis. The Android navigation buttons are all capacitive and are positioned between the display and keyboard.

This is not the one attention-grabbing factor in regards to the KEYone’s design. It is rounded on the underside and flat on prime, for a quite uncommon general look. The glass in entrance is subtly bevelled on the edges, however not curved like most telephones at this time. Your complete rear is fabricated from a rubberised plastic which provides wonderful grip. The principle digital camera and its flash are designed prominently into the higher left nook of the rear.

On the highest of the telephone, you may discover solely a 3.5mm audio socket. The ability button is on the left, which is extraordinarily uncommon. Sadly, BlackBerry’s customary Comfort Secret is on the best, slightly below the amount buttons, and it is very easy to hit this out of behavior when attempting to show the telephone on. There is a USB Kind-C port on the underside flanked by two speaker grilles, solely considered one of which is definitely a speaker.

Though the KEYone is kind of tall, the display loses a little bit of top so as to match the keyboard in. It’s additionally comparatively thick at 9.4mm and heavy at 180g. Whereas the rounded physique visually masks how a lot house there’s on both facet of the display, you are feeling this telephone’s bulk while you begin utilizing it. When typing, you may naturally have to carry this telephone near the underside in order that your thumbs are over the keyboard, which makes it a bit top-heavy and awkward. It’s doable, although not very snug, to steadiness this telephone in a single hand and sort with one thumb.

Within the field, you get a comparatively compact charger, a USB Kind-C cable, a wired headset, two further pairs of rubber ear suggestions in several sizes, a SIM eject device, and a few pamphlets.

BlackBerry KEYone keyboard
As its title suggests, this telephone is all in regards to the keyboard. BlackBerry has created a distinct segment for itself, however is it actually value shopping for a telephone only for this one function? We spent almost every week with the system and used its keyboard closely to seek out out.

The keyboard makes use of BlackBerry’s basic format which can appear peculiar to anybody who hasn’t used one earlier than. The Shift keys are on both facet of the spacebar, numbers are organized like a conventional telephone keypad quite than a row, and punctuation is everywhere. BlackBerry clearly needed to resolve whether or not to cater to its legacy person base or a brand new technology of customers, and it selected the conservative choice.

When you get your grip sorted and get used to the format, typing with two thumbs is just not laborious. The keys themselves are extraordinarily wobbly which makes it little unsure. The three major rows prolong proper as much as the telephone’s edges on either side, and the keys on the ends of every row are very simple to snag on fingernails, unfastened threads, and diverse little belongings you might need in your pockets. We have been afraid that we would by chance rip these keys proper off the telephone.

The floor of the keyboard is touch-sensitive, a function that we first noticed and beloved on the BlackBerry Passport. You’ll be able to slide throughout it to scroll up, down, left or proper similar to you’d on a trackpad. When typing, you may maintain Shift down and swipe round to pick textual content. The floor is, after all, uneven and it is a bit tough to be exact, but it surely’s nonetheless very cool. Buried deep inside the Settings app, you may discover an choice that permits Swype-style typing over the bodily keyboard, however at the price of all different gestures.

Additionally, like with the Passport, there is a hybrid element to this keyboard. When typing, you may see three autocomplete strategies in a row on the underside of the display. Swiping upwards on the keyboard under it “flings” that phrase to the place your cursor is. Urgent the Sym key brings up an on-screen image selector, which is definitely one panel of the identical keyboard we have seen on BlackBerry’s all-touch Android telephones. With one faucet, you may change to the usual QWERTY panel (with a horizontal numbers bar). You even get auto full strategies at your fingertips proper on the smooth keys.

This duplication reveals us that the {hardware} and software program aren’t completely in tune. One other instance of that is the truth that you may’t simply begin typing even when it might be apparent to take action. For instance, you must be capable of begin looking via the Play Retailer or typing into a brand new browser tab’s URL discipline instantly. As an alternative, it’s important to faucet every discipline to activate it first, such as you have been pulling up an on-screen keyboard. That is pointless friction, and you may see that the native BlackBerry search app would not endure from it. One other small difficulty is that the position of the Android navigation buttons disrupts the continuity of the hardware-software keyboard.

Lastly, one function carried over from basic BlackBerrys that we really love is the flexibility to bind shortcuts to the keyboard. You’ll be able to short-press or long-press every of the letter keys and select to set off an app, toggle a setting, or a name a selected contact. You’ll be able to even arrange shortcuts to actions inside apps, akin to opening a brand new be aware, setting a brand new alarm, composing a BBM message to a contact, or taking part in a selected playlist. This offers you a complete of 52 customisable shortcuts plus the Comfort Key on the facet.

BlackBerry KEYOne specs and software program
Regardless of its higher-end worth, the KEYone has decidedly mid-range specs. The processor is an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625, which is now slightly dated. The model of this telephone offered in different nations has much less RAM and storage, however 4GB of RAM and 64GB respectively right here. One other key distinction the Indian model of this telephone is it may work with two SIMs right here. Sadly, it is a hybrid dual-SIM association, so whilst you can increase storage utilizing a microSD card of as much as 2TB, that comes at the price of the second SIM slot. 4G and VoLTE are supported.

The display has an uncommon 1080×1620 decision and three:2 side ratio due to the keyboard. It is nonetheless fairly crisp at 434ppi and you will not discover a lot of a distinction when doing issues that do not contain gaming and video playback. BlackBerry says you really get extra usable display house in productiveness apps as a result of there is no smooth keyboard.

There is a 3505mAh battery, and Qualcomm’s Fast Cost 3.0 function is supported. The rear digital camera has a 12-megapixel sensor whereas the one in entrance is available in at 8 megapixels. You additionally get Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, and even FM radio.

On the software program facet, we have now BlackBerry’s closely customised Android pores and skin, now on prime of Android 7.1. It is a lot the identical as what we noticed on the Priv and DTEK50, apart from the absence of the swipe gesture to launch the BlackBerry Hub. There are some very neat touches akin to the flexibility to swipe on house display icons to point out widgets related to their apps, and an enormous variety of direct shortcuts – any motion that may be assigned to the keyboard keys may also be triggered with a customized house display icon.

You’ll be able to select a darkish UI theme and swap the default Android icons for traditional BlackBerry ones. The tiled app switcher is a little bit of a ache, since tiles are of a number of completely different sizes and you may’t simply see the order they have been utilized in. We’re additionally nonetheless not followers of the BlackBerry “splat” badge on app icons, which tells you that you’ve got notifications, however not what number of.

The BlackBerry Hub replaces a easy SMS app and reveals all of your messages and emails throughout accounts and companies. It considerably duplicates the Android notifications pane, however the benefit is that you just see solely communications from folks right here, not app alerts. It really works with messengers and social media apps as properly – some apps akin to Fb allow you to message contacts and even replace your standing from inside the Hub, whereas with others present notifications that pull you into the native app while you faucet them.

The DTEK safety app is a dashboard that claims to point out you a safety overview of your telephone, but it surely’s very similar to the “system optimiser” apps that do not actually do a lot. Two of the safety checks inform you that you’re in reality utilizing a BlackBerry telephone with BlackBerry’s model of Android, which is not actually useful data. The one actually helpful function is that DTEK can observe whether or not apps are attempting to change the OS, and can provide you with a warning to any such makes an attempt.

BlackBerry KEYone utilization efficiency and cameras
After spending appreciable time with the KEYone, we will see that this telephone is barely going to enchantment to a slender viewers. Lots of people did hate typing on touchscreens ten years in the past, but it surely’s second nature to us now, and the cramped KEYone keyboard is not a clear-cut enchancment. It undoubtedly takes some getting used to, and even after a full week, we have been unable to match our touchscreen typing pace and accuracy.

We didn’t encounter apps that had any issues scaling to the squarer display but it surely’s doable that there will likely be some. The awkwardness of gaming and watching motion pictures is an issue, however lots of people will purchase this telephone as a secondary work-only system or as a result of they care way more about productiveness. Aside from these issues, the display itself is sharp and crisp although not essentially the most vibrant. Viewing angles are fantastic and brightness is nice sufficient for outside utilization.

Apps run easily and multitasking is not an issue, however we undoubtedly do not get a flagship-class stage of efficiency right here. We obtained solely 60,449 factors within the AnTuTu benchmark and 82.55 in Basemark Net, plus 8,323 factors in 3DMark Ice Storm Excessive and 24fps in GFXBench’s T-Rex check. Geekbench 4.0 ran however crashed a number of occasions when trying to generate outcomes. The telephone did not get scorching besides after a number of hours of video playback.

The 12-megapixel rear digital camera takes usually first rate photographs within the daytime. Autofocus locks rapidly and particulars are usually fairly good. We even obtained some good depth of discipline results in close-up photographs. Colors did not actually pop even in photographs taken in vivid daylight, however in all different regards, our pattern photographs have been fairly good. Alternatively, photographs taken at evening tended to be blurry due to for much longer shutter occasions, and ISO values additionally various wildly between photographs taken in rapid succession, resulting in inconsistent outcomes.

(Faucet to see full-sized BlackBerry KEYone digital camera samples)

Solely only a few of our pattern photographs got here out good. There was additionally a whole lot of noise and grain in low-light photographs. A Handbook mode toggle may be discovered within the settings, however even within the default Auto mode, you get an publicity compensation slider on display.

The BlackBerry KEYone digital camera app provides a slow-mo video mode and a number of other combos of resolutions and framerates. Recording can go as much as 4K/ 30fps however just for 5 minutes at a time. Software program stabilisation solely works at as much as 1080p/ 30fps. Movies taken at 1080p and 4K seemed crisp, and movement was clean.

BlackBerry boasts in regards to the KEYone’s battery life, and in our expertise, it was one of many system’s stronger factors. We have been constantly capable of get via a full day with a little bit of energy left over. Nevertheless, our utilization was skewed in the direction of Net looking, messaging and informal apps, with much less gaming and video streaming than traditional as a result of this telephone actually would not lend itself to these actions. Our HD video loop check ran for 9 hours, 36 minutes, which is kind of common.

BlackBerry KEYone in pictures

Verdict
It is a distinctive smartphone and may’t actually be judged as an equal with others in its worth class. It clearly targets a distinct segment, however what’s unknown at this level is whether or not the target market is sufficiently big. Even when there are individuals who like the concept or the reminiscence of a bodily keyboard, will they be keen to simply accept the tradeoffs that this telephone calls for? In a universe of glossy metallic telephones with borderless screens and curved glass in every single place, the KEYone is a little bit of a brute and we’re undecided we want this as our main telephones, despite the fact that we will actually make use of its productiveness options.

The keyboard format, button placement, and generally awkward marriage of {hardware} and software program all present the place the KEYone discovered its steadiness, however there are nonetheless some seams between the Android and BlackBerry worlds. 

At this worth, you would get the LG G6 (Review) or Samsung Galaxy S7 (Review), and naturally there are many well-regarded telephones such because the OnePlus 5 (Review) and Honor 8 Pro (Review) which might be priced fairly a bit decrease. You’ll actually need to worth the keyboard above having a big display and slim physique, to not point out the final efficiency and digital camera high quality of a high-end telephone.