BlackBerry Comeback? - Key2 Smartphone Review! - Electric Playground By Electric Playground Network - EPN

Okay blackberry reached out to meet not too long ago, and they said hey. Do you want to review our brand-new key too, and I did an unboxing on EP live and got some boos and AHS, and here it is here- is the key to cell phone? It's an Android phone, and you'll notice that the big interesting thing about this is that it has a physical keyboard on it, and I've said this many times in my phone reviews, it's very hard to kind of make these things kind of stand out these days because they're all so damn good, they're, very powerful. You know a lot of them are getting super. Bezel is so they've. Just looked like little glass screens that you're carrying around with you, but not this one. This one is unique and different, and it is easy to kind of start with the keyboard, because that's what this one is all about.

It's got a pretty small screen comparative to the rest of the smartphones that are out there these days, even the smaller size phones like the Samsung Galaxy S 9, or the iPhone 8, or the iPhone 10, which are kind of smaller in stature, have kind of bigger screens than this, so you're not really getting this phone for the idea that you're going to be consuming tons and tons of media on it. I believe that you'll play some games on it, you'll. You know, watch some videos on YouTube, but stuff like that for sure, like every smartphone out there, but it's really about the keyboard, and it's about the BlackBerry integration. They have this D Tech software in there, which is all about security and encryption, and it's really, you know a big deal for enterprise users out there, business users and stuff out there I have to be honest, I have some of that stuff. That's my concern in the day-to-day running of our business here, but for the most part, I pick up the cell phone and I.

You know obviously answer tons of emails, and I'm a Twitter and all that stuff and I did lots of that, while I was using this, but for the most part, I used my phone to kind of consume a lot of video media, I, listen to podcasts, I, listen to music on it all the time and so and I take tons of pictures on my cell phone. My regular cell phone, which is an iPhone 7 plus, is what I'm, using right now, and so I'm used to using the phone like that. I'm also used to a non-physical keyboard. Now I was an old BlackBerry user back in the day, I also had a Palm Pilot with a keyboard on it. So this is not a new idea to me to have a physical keyboard and I actually did like the construction of the phone in its entirety.

I think it's a pretty solidly built device. It's made by a company called TCL who has taken over the creation of blackberry products, but I love the keyboard. It's really, really slick the thing that I don't like about it is that the keys are pretty scrunched together, so even if you've got a on-screen keyboard which, by the way, this also provides. So you have the physical keyboard and then because it's an Android, it gets the Oreo operating system. It will also pop up the embedded on-screen keyboard, which gets a little confusing, but I don't like that.

It is a little scrunched up, so I was, but you know, as I was learning and getting accustomed to using this keyboard again, because it is a bit of a re-education. We're so used to touchscreen keyboards now, but as I was pressing the wrong keys and then the major thing that I notice is. You have to press the alt button in order to get to the numbers on the keyboard or to get to symbols like the @ symbol and stuff, and that is a little more clunky and cumbersome. It feels like the on-screen keyboards are a little more robust one of the cool things that they did with the keyboard, though, is that the can scroll with it, which is pretty rad, so you can scroll down Twitter and on webpages and stuff, but they've also added a fingerprint sensor into the space bar. So you can actually unlock the phone which I think I just did by tapping on the space bar, and it didn't always work.

It frustrated me a little. You know, I kept trying different fingers and- and you know, I'd put four of my fingers into the fingerprint sensor readout, but it didn't always take and that kind of bugged me a little in terms of specs. It uses the snapdragon 660, which is a little older of a, know, architecture a little. It's been around for a little, but it's a smaller screen. So it doesn't need the power that you know tons and tons of beautiful graphics and stuff on there.

I played some games like Real, Racing, 3 and Sonic ? and, of course, clash, Royale and stuff just to test out how all of that was working, didn't slow down. They were fine, they rendered everything quite well. The speaker on the bottom was very tinny, and it's mono, or I think it's mono, it's just it's its. It has two little ports there that are sort of meant to simulate stereo, but it sounded very tinny and tiny. But one thing that I love about this phone is that it uses traditional headphones -.

If you've got some excellent headphones, you can slap them in there. The earbuds that come with the phone are actually pretty solid as well. I was listening to some music on Amazon Music, and it was streaming just fine. The cameras are not great. It has ? 12 megapixel cameras in the back, so you can get some portrait mode stuff, and you can also shoot 4k.

Video and I tried, shooting some stuff and I found that the stabilization wasn't very good at all. Colors were a little too accentuated a little bit too in-your-face and I. Really don't like the selfie cam, the front facing camera, if I haven't been able to get a good picture, I don't with my face or if it's the camera itself, but I haven't been happy with any of those pictures. So the photos have been ok, you know, but again, I, don't think you're picking a phone up like this, because you're necessarily first the priority you're looking at excellent photos problem is that almost every other phone out there now has pretty damn good cameras on it. They have a big screen, so you can watch movies and YouTube and stuff, and it looks incredible and play games on it.

The only thing that most of the other phones don't have is this physical keyboard and, quite frankly, I feel like the keyboard should have been a little. Larger would have almost been great if there was a key 2 plus, which gave you maybe some number keys and was a little bigger, give you bigger, screen real estate or perhaps in the future, because you know I think there is this demand for a product like this out there. There's lots of you know, elapsed, BlackBerry users that have been lamenting the fact that they can't go back to physical keys. Perhaps there will be some kind of great fold out option the ergonomics and the construction on this really solid. It has a great battery as well.

It's going to last you a couple of days and part of it is because it's not sending tons and tons of information out there, and it's got a know a slightly older and more tested processor. Furthermore, it's got a decent amount of RAM in there, and it uses UP USB-C, which is great. You know it's its decent I just wish it was bigger. I wish that the keyboard was a little larger. The screen was a bit larger and another big issue I'm in Vancouver.

It hasn't rained in a while, but it does rain all the time here and this is not at all water resistant or waterproof at all. And that's another big feature: that's that's in lots of cell phones. These days, you know it's still. It's still pretty damn decent, though it feels rugged. It feels well-constructed I, like the tactility of the keys I, like that it's unique, and I have become more of an Apple guy.

I've got more of my data and I like iMessage, and I've got a media library and all that stuff on my iPhones that I've been using since they first started, but it is gonna, be something like this that is so unique. That's going to make me pay attention to an Android device and I think it's a good step. Blackberry I think this is a pretty damn cool phone I'm going to give the key to a 7 out of 10.

Source : Electric Playground Network - EPN