Blackberry KEY2 Unboxing and Thoughts After 48 Hours! By Jordan Keyes

Hot on the heels of my previous video about the Gemini from Planet computers, I say because I'm actually filming the intro to this video, the very same night that I wrapped up the video about the gym and I have a video about another device for you today. It's been a good number of years since I've, actually gotten hands on with a BlackBerry device used to work for the state of Kentucky, and we were issued these little weird shaped blackberries that had keyboards and everything. This was long before the common days of smartphones. Blackberries changed an awful lot in the last few years, and I was kind of curious to see what they were like nowadays, if I remember correctly, I think TCL tickle, whatever company name, that is I, think they're the ones actually manufacturing the new devices at one way or another. The name BlackBerry is still being slapped upon them and so in front of us. Here today we have the BlackBerry key -.

This was sent out to me for free to take a look at from blackberry. So, let's open it up, let's take a look at it. Maybe I'll use it for a few days and let you know what I think about it. So, just in case you're curious in case you haven't, read up on it because, honestly, before they reached out to me, I hadn't read a lot about it myself, the BlackBerry key ?, as you can see here on the front, it's a device that has a screen a physical keyboard. It has 64 gigs of storage with six gigs of built-in RAM.

On the back. You can see 4G LTE cat 12, a four and a half inch IPS 16 20 by 1080 display it's a very weird aspect ratio. It has an outscore 64-bit, snapdragon, 616 processors, so obviously not the high-end 8:35 8:40 8:45. It's been a while, since I've read about the specs of these things, I've been kind of out of the game for a little. Furthermore, it's a 660, it's an outscore.

Furthermore, it should get the job done for a lot of people, rear camera, dual 12, megapixel, autofocus camera a wide and a tell lens front. Camera is 8 megapixels, again 64, gigs, plus 6, gigs of memory, storage, plus RAM, and a 3500 William hour battery running Android and I seem to remember, seeing that it was Android 8.1 online, but we'll check on that. So, let's just open this up and take a look at it open. There is the phone, that's a pretty beefy, looking phone and actually very solid feeling cold metal around the outside can't really feel the back because it does have a sticker on. It will come right back.

This says that it's the documentation and the sim removal tool documentation, welcome to your new Android smartphone Quick, Start, Guide, different languages and a limited warranty. Twelve months you get a pair of earbuds, along with it a USB type-c cable that is USB type-c to type an am I saying that right is it a or b old-style, USB still perfect to have then a USB wall charger which you may not be able to read on there. It says down here at the bottom: five volts at three amps output, nine volts at two amps or twelve volts at one and a half amps, so a twenty-five watt charger, presumably for Qualcomm quick charge, although I seem to remember those being slightly different voltages. Take a look at these headphones while I'm in here these earbuds just see if they're any good, because I never really do that. Well, just sticking them in my ears.

They block out a lot of sound, and they're. Staying in pretty well I've, been using a lot more earbuds. Now that I've started a new job, I'll just take them along with me and if I want to listen to music or something plug them into the laptop plug them into a phone. If the phone has a three-and-a-half millimeter jack very convenient, so these might actually end up in my work. Laptop bag we'll see if they're any good, and they did come with some spare ear tips and finally, back to the phone itself.

This looks to be a sticker on the front, so we'll go ahead and peel that away and peel the sticker on the back away. Oh, that's satisfying! So here you can see the back of the phone that dual rear-facing 12 megapixel camera with LED flash, and actually it looks to be a dual tone: LED, flash blackberry branding, and it's got a very nice rubberized texture on the back feels extremely solid I mean, like I, said before I've had a couple of BlackBerry devices when I used to work for the state, and this definitely feels premium like those devices. It feels solid, the metal build around the outside I'm liking. That, in the hand, the keyboard that old-style BlackBerry keyboard, very click, but not loud I'll, obviously have trouble typing on it. But I don't know I like that.

We're on the outside we've got the SIM card slot here on one side, USB see on the bottom with speaker, I, don't know if its dual speakers, but it does have dual grills. On the other side, we have the volume rocker what appears to be the power button and a dedicated button for something we'll have to see what that's for and then on the top three-and-a-half millimeter jack and what appears to be the ambient. My phone now is canceling microphone, perhaps, and given that the SIM card slot is on the side, I can only assume this back. Cover does not come off, and I'm pretty much. Okay with that I really like the texture of that it doesn't add as much grip Enos as I would kind of like for it to, but it does have a good feel in the hand.

The whole thing feels just like a tank, so let's hold the power button and see if I can get it to come on. I think this is the power button, and it buzzed very briefly again that old, familiar kind of blackberry style, buzz that I remember so much not enjoying get that message on your blackberry when you're at home with the family- and you know, there's trouble but at least this time I'm not putting work stuff on this. This is not a work device which means that I don't have to fear the buzz anymore, but there is your startup animation, just holding this in my hand, for a couple of seconds, I'm convinced that I'm going to be hitting this bottom button on the side, a lot just because, where my hand fits the way that I'm kind of holding it that's where my finger generally tends to rest so whatever. That is, let's hope that it's not something that's gonna, take a bunch of photos or trigger off phone calls or something. But anyway here is the traditional Android setup.

We don't have a SIM card in or anything, so we'll hit start connect to a mobile network. If you have a sim insert it now, and actually, since I'm just finishing up the other video, let me go ahead and use the sim tool, and I'll put my T-Mobile SIM in here and actually kind of. As expected, you do have a micro SD card slot, as well as a NATO SIM. So I'll go ahead and put my sim in there. Stick it into the phone.

Don't have a micro SD I want to use in this at the moment, and it immediately detected. I was on T-Mobile and told me that, so I hit OK. It's gonna just use the T-Mobile APN settings. It asks if I want to copy apps and data or set up as a new device, so we'll set it up as new connect to my Wi-Fi network. Oh, that's interesting! You use alt and then the numbers are right here.

It's like a 10 key on the keyboard itself. Right on the left hand, side, that's kind of neat. It is gonna, take some getting used to typing on here, but the keyboard is very comfortable and there's a little raised nub on the D. It's kind of hard to feel it though, but just typing. My email address in that could have gone a lot worse and after realizing that there's both an alt and a shift and making sure I had the right one I was able to get the password typed in now, two-factor authentication, oh and that's a new one.

That's fascinating, fingerprint sensor on the space bar of the phone, so locate the fingerprint sensor. Let's start all that is amazing, not that it's like super new and innovative, but I haven't seen one in a space bar before, so it's pretty cool to me. You don't actually have to press down. You just touch it lightly and a minute later, we're back we're ready to assign the EULA the License, Agreement, yeah, yeah, okay, and we're complete, and it's going to do a quick walkthrough. So this is the BlackBerry launcher.

You can organize your space, there are pop-up widgets. If an app has an indicator you can swipe up or down on the app to open a widget, there's a Productivity tab. You can swipe in your tap down here for apps, a universal shortcut key! That's what this is press this and any letter key to configure a shortcut with shortcuts. You can launch any app or perform an action, that's kind of cool, and so here we are so, if I swipe over on this little tab, let's see what pops out swipe the tab at any time to display your newest messages, events and more productivity tab skip intro yeah plan your day to glance. Customize settings add widgets to it.

Swipe back when finished and app permissions. Okay, I'll have it to access contacts. Okay and making massif phone calls SMS calendar. This needs access to pretty much everything, but it's going to be managing it. So, presumably that's what it's for to swipe over there's Settings button, and it looks like just another launcher, pretty much just different things to do in here.

Interesting I, don't know if it's a way that I would actually want to use the phone, but it's nice to have it there as an option pretty easy to get to see these have dots under them. So I could swipe up to see what they are. Chrome bookmarks Chrome search swipe up on that one blackberry hub, Plus service permissions. I! Don't want to do that right now, calendar you select the widget, so apparently that's to select the widget not to actually see things inside it and I keep getting notifications. I need to turn the volume down there.

We go silent mode, so it mentions Wi-Fi calling is not ready. DEC rating is fair security features. So there is a built-in security service from blackberry learn more in preview power centers to get the most battery life. We are currently at 41% battery out of the box new keyboard extension new SIM card detected doing a bunch of updates in terms of what actually came pre-installed just because I was curious. Well, you've had a bunch of apps, but let's see if I can go just alphabetical by scrolling down a little, so BBM I've not used BBM in a lot of years, I'm curious if people are still using it.

Traditional apps' calculator, calendar camera, Chrome, clock content, transfer that'll be hopefully useful if I wanted to transfer from my note, for example, Docs and download due, that's the security app duo, I've not used duo, I'll, admit it. I haven't had a reason to hub and Locker notable password keeper privacy shade redactor, so realistically I mean. Obviously this is not locked to one particular carrier or another, so you wouldn't expect there to be a lot of bloatware built into it. But basically, what you get is a pretty stock google experience with a lot of blackberry apps. On top of it, a lot of security, related sort of almost enterprise friendly apps built into it, and obviously you can extend that.

You can add your own stuff to it, because it is Android. You can just go to the Play Store get whatever you want. I do remember a time when a lot of the phones that I got my hands on did not have Google Play Services. That was a different time. Kids, let me put on my old man hat and get my Walker lots of updates to do, though, but anyway, I think what I'm going to go ahead and do is let this charge let this get all the updates done, spend some time with it, and I'll give you sort of my first impressions of it.

After having used it for a day or two I, don't want to give a full thorough review on it, but I also don't want to just use it once and say: go buy it now. I do think the pricing on this is about six hundred and fifty dollars here in the US, if you're interested in picking one up but again, I'm going to go ahead and start using this, as my secondary device got the iPhone in one pocket and an Android phone in the other pocket, that's just how I live, and for the last few months the note 8 has actually been in my second pocket simply because Samsung pay is amazing, so I'm kind of curious. If there's any payment solutions on this and how they'll work, because obviously they're not going to be Samsung pay, so we'll have to find that out too. So we will be back very soon, and we're back. It's been a couple of days, and I've been using this device, as my secondary my backup phone, if you will, but I've been using it for an awful lot of things and I wanted to go ahead and give some initial thoughts and impressions on it, not a long term, thorough, in-depth anything just my thoughts and apologies in advance for this shirt.

It's probably not gonna, look terribly great on camera, but it's what I wore today. So I wasn't change, but before I forget the earbuds that were included with this phone, the BlackBerry branded earbuds, actually sound, perfect, surprisingly good for a pair of threes and a half millimeter included with the phone earbuds I'm. Definitely going to be hanging onto these and using them in my work, laptop backpack, but for the device itself. First off. Obviously the fingerprint sensor I didn't even know that it was really a thing.

I didn't know a lot about this phone coming into it, but the fingerprint sensor is absolutely excellent. I mean you, maybe can see it here when it works there we go. If you hit it just right. If you get your finger, where you've set it up before it works very reliably, it works pretty quickly too. It takes just a second for the screen to come up, but it does work, and I've been pleased with it.

So far the screen itself. It's again it's a bit of an odd aspect ratio, it's like 1600 by 1080, instead of 1920 by 1080, which means that things are in a very odd ratio. So, if I open YouTube, for example, just a video that I had playing earlier from the vlogbrothers, you can kind of see, there are bars on all sides of it and that's not bad, but again, you've got a phone. That's this size, but you're only able to use that much of a for actual content a little of a bummer, but again you're, probably not buying a phone like this one, with a physical keyboard to watch, media I tend to use all the phones that I have on hand for watching media. So that's that's just me in terms of the speaker, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn't sure if the bottom facing speakers were actually both speakers or if one was one as it turns out of these two grills that are on the bottom of the device.

This one is a speaker. This one is not I'm guessing there's a microphone hidden away in here with a lot of the newer devices. This front facing speaker is also a stereo speaker, and it's just not on this one, as maybe you can hear there. The speaker gets kind of loud, don't want to play too much of that. That's Ted pool it gets kinda loud, but it does also kind of distort at the highest volume so again, not a device that I would be buying and expecting to use for media consumption in very much the same vein.

How I use a lot of smartphones as a camera? I did use this one as a camera. Just a little and I took a few pictures outside which I'll go ahead and show up on the screen here. I also did a little with video and just for a quick test. This is a look at the rear-facing, 4k 30 frames per second video from the BlackBerry key -. This is in my very bright studio lights, so this should one of the more optimal conditions, so just take a look around see if there's any shakiness to where I'm hand holding this.

If there's any graininess see how the audio sounds. That's about it- and this is not gonna- look quite right, but it is 1080p 30 frames per second video from the front-facing camera on the BlackBerry key ? from looking in the screen. It doesn't look all that bad and after watching the video back of the 4k video I just did it didn't. Look all that bad either. It's probably a little grainy, especially in the darker areas, but that's just kind of cell phone quality.

Video. But again, let me know what you think again. The 1080p in this 4k project isn't gonna, look quite right, but there you go. Let me just say that the camera app is very, very odd. It's the BlackBerry camera app and just to quickly go through it here.

The button at the bottom here is to take photos. The button to the right of that that looks like the same button. If you hit it, you can change the mode. You can go. Video portrait mode scanner, slo-mo pan, oh I've, spent most of my time in the photo and video modes, the portrait mode.

You would kind of expect that to work on both the rear-facing and the front-facing after owning the newest iPhone, that's kind of just what I came to expect. It was wrong. So if you have it set to the front-facing camera like I do, and you get portrait, it's going to go ahead and flip it back around to the other camera, but it is using the two times the telephoto, which means it's incredibly zoomed in was in back out. So if you wanted to do a selfie portrait, it's just not going to work. That said, the portrait mode didn't seem to make that big of a difference if nice-looking but again, I haven't spent enough time with it to have a thorough, real, in-depth opinion on it.

Maybe I can do a separate video about the camera. If you want to learn more about it, the other bit of weirdness to it is with the video mode. So, if I go and switch over to video mode, get it turned appropriately, you might be able to see over here on the side. Probably can't it's kind of hard to see. It says: 4k 30 frames a second.

If I click on it, 4k 30 is the top resolution goes to 1080p, 60 and 720p 30 and all of those options 4k 30 is the highest. You can go, though, if I switch over to the front-facing camera. Now, though, click on it again, it's 720p 30 frames per second. So coming at this from an end-user point of view, if I'm filming something in front of me at 4k, and then I want to switch to the selfie camera, you would think using the highest resolution that I would want to whatever the highest is on the front facing as well, but it's defaulting back to seven 2030 for some reason, if I go ahead and change it here manually to ten eighty thirty, it's given me error messages about video stabilization anyway, though 1080p30, if I switch back over to the rear facing camera, 1080 thirty, so the 4k thirty frames per second that I had said earlier is now lost because I switched the front-facing camera to 1080. Thirty I'm, actually curious, I haven't tried this yet 1080p 24 frames per second.

If I switch over its still 1080p24, so I can only assume that it's switching to the highest common frame rate that they support except the front camera, doesn't support 4k, but why would I switch it to 720p 30 frames? It's just confusing to me. That's something that can be fixed with software updates. So it's not really that big a deal, and it's not something that most people are going to be affected by I, would assume I would definitely be highly affected by it if I were using. This is my primary device simply because I do tend, when I'm filming with a phone to have that 4k video on the rear facing and then occasionally switch to front-facing, to be able to film myself and family and stuff so to find that half of my clips or 720p 30 when the rest of them are 4k, 30 I would be very disappointed. So that's that, in terms of the actual performance of the phone, just everyday usage, I use this for a lot of email.

A lot of general messaging I tend to use the Google Apps for those things so Google Hangouts Gmail. However, there is a built-in blackberry hub, app I, I didn't really use it I had it there, it automatically integrated all the stuff from my Google account, as well as like messaging and phone calls, and that was kind of cool, but at the same time I don't necessarily want to be able to see all of that in one place. I have, however, heard people say that they do want it. So that's a great feature: there are people that want it I'm, just not the one and in terms of the actual performance other than everyday stuff. The only games that I've tried on here are Pok?mon Go and pub G I'm, not a pub G player.

So this was actually my first time trying it pub. G did not play particularly well on this I put it at the lowest settings, and it was kind of playable. But again, you've got this large section over here. That is keyboard. So, when you're trying to use two fingers on the screen, that's a relatively small space, and you're having to navigate around that keyboard, which makes it kind of awkward.

So maybe not the best for gaming, so at this point, I've sort of narrowed it down that not the best for media consumption, not the best for gaming, not the best for content creation. So who is this device for well, as I mentioned before? It has a really nice keyboard, very nice for typing. Very click I definitely appreciate the keyboard on this, the built-in BlackBerry apps enterprise, friendly messaging and communications oriented. That's who I think this is for someone who wants to be in constant communication who's, always sending those text, messages or emails. That's the kind of person.

This is definitely a good choice for, for somebody, who's very screen oriented for someone, who's very content, heavy kind of like myself. This may not be the best option, but that's probably where I'm going to go ahead and wrap the video up. Because again, this is very much my 2-day impressions of using this as a backup phone. If you'd like to know more about it, if you want me to spend more time with this as a primary device, definitely let me know down in the comment section below, but yeah I think that's going to wrap it up for today, thanks so much to the people at BlackBerry. For sending this out for me to take a look at I.

Definitely appreciate it. Thanks to you guys for watching I'll put a link or a bunch of links. Tour. You can find this because it's now readily available I think, but thank you guys, as always for watching by the time this video goes up. We should be over a hundred thousand subscribers.

So thank you guys so much for the constant support for subscribing to the channel. Over the last eight years, I've been making YouTube videos for eight and a half years now, so I definitely appreciate you guys, sticking around helping me get to this milestone, and hopefully we'll have a long future ahead of us, and hopefully you'll, stick with me for that. So we'll see you again real soon, bye, guys.

Source : Jordan Keyes