BlackBerry KEYone Review: BEST phone you shouldn't buy! By Dom Esposito

What's going on everyone, this is DOM and this is a BlackBerry smartphone in 2017 yep. So this is the key one, and I'm not going to bore you here with a spec sheet review, but inside this is mostly like everything else: there's a Snapdragon 625 processor, 3, gigabytes of RAM, 32, gigabytes of storage, micro, SD card expansion, blah blah blah you get it. The real difference here lies in what makes this different and not just another, run-of-the-mill smartphone, with a dated brand's logo slapped on the back. This is being billed as the world's most secure Android smartphone, but honestly I couldn't care less about that, because if it doesn't do great things, then what's the point first off, let's talk about the build quality and boy: does this thing pack some good stuff? It's probably one of the best built smartphones that have had the chance to review, and I know. That sounds like kind of a stretch here, but this thing feels very premium with a metal build for the frame, some nice weight to it and a very drippy rubber texture on the back, and it just feels super executive. If that's what you're into and definitely looks different from any of the other smartphones out there, aside from the build quality, though, obviously there's a physical keyboard here, which is very hard to ignore, and it's not what we're used to seeing these days and Blackberry originally went this route with Android back in late 2015, with the release of the Drive, which seemed like it was more or less a flop.

Now that I look at it, but essentially having an always-on keyboard tacked to the bottom of the display here might make it a bit more appealing as far as smartphones are concerned, if you're into that kind of thing, but the keyboard itself is very feature pack, first off the key one's fingerprint sensors built into the space bar on the keyboard, which surprisingly, is a very awesome place to put it, and it performs great there's, also the ability to have up to 52 keyboard shortcuts to basically anything on the phone. So each a letter key can be mapped out to an action which could become a bit confusing or even on occasion, cause accidental launching of apps, which I had experienced. But I appreciate it. Nonetheless, it's very cool to have that many shortcuts here and the keyboard also functions like somewhat of a trackpad for scrolling through emails, apps or websites, which is great, and if all that wasn't enough, you can also have a little of assistance with typing, and you can easily flick, left right or up on the keyboard to choose a word from the predictive text shown on the screen. The keyboard itself isn't the click astir round, it's actually kind of mushy in my opinion, but it's fairly easy to type on given a minor adjustment period.

It's just not a normal feeling to have a physical keyboard on a smartphone these days, but it definitely works as advertised, and I've slowly become a fan of it. I'm sure you've noticed that weird display size by now so because of the keyboard, the display here only measures in at 4.5 inches with a 16 20 by 1080 resolution covered by Gorilla Glass 4. It's obviously not the most pixel dense display on the market, but it's an IPS panel with a 3x2 aspect ratio, and it looks pretty good. But clearly the display is not the single best-selling point of the key one, but if you think about it for productivity?s sake, you actually have more screen real estate when typing, because you'll have more on the screen, and you'll have a virtual keyboard covering up that space. A key component of what makes this special for the right person is in the software, so obviously we're running Android nougat here, which is great, but it's what blackberry packs in that may or may not be desirable, and I like that they kept the interface clean, and this thing looks and functions just like Android.

It's basically no skin at all. Most of the features are tucked away here. So obviously BBM is a staple of owning a blackberry, but you can get that on any Android device. At this point, it's in the Play Store, and I'm, not really one to use. It.

There's also BlackBerry's version of the edge screen here which stores useful information like calendar, appointments, unread messages, tasks, contacts and more, and you can access the screen by swiping over from the side of the display. Now it's a nice way to glance at upcoming things, but to take things even further, there's blackberry hub, which is kind of like a mix of all notifications in one place, sorted chronologically and by accounts, and it's pretty clean. But honestly, none of this really excites me. One of the most shocking features of the key one is definitely the rear camera. So I wasn't expecting a great camera to come from a blackberry, but damn I was wrong.

This is a 12 megapixel, Sony IMF 378 sensor with an aperture of f2, and it's exactly what you'll find in the Google Pixel. So that's something to think about it's a pretty great camera, though performance was actually good and optimal conditions, as well as moderately low light and I will be sure to leave a gallery linked below. If you want to check out samples for yourself but again, very impressed with the camera on this guy. Now, when the front camera is an 8 megapixel shooter in case you care as for battery life, this is another area that was very shocking. The 3505 William power capacity here is fantastic, and the key one packs quick charge 3.0, which will get you up to 50 percent charge in roughly 30 minutes via the USB-C port on the bottom. But the battery life here is very incredible: I've been seeing around 6 to 6 and a half hours of screen on time with the most scene here around 7 hours, and that is crazy, good and exceeded my expectations of the key one.

By far, thankfully, blackberry sacrificed an overall thinner device in favor of battery capacity, something that pretty much every smartphone maker should do these days. The thing is as great as this smartphone is on a variety of levels. Blackberry has been a dying brand for quite some time. It's seen a bit of a revival thanks to TCL, which is the company actually behind this smartphone, but coming in at around 550 bucks. Is it really worth the money? The phone itself has a great build.

It's got a nice camera awesome battery life and a bunch of other goodies like the physical keyboard. If you care about that, but none of them really excite me, especially in 2017, and you can find a ton of other smartphones around this price range with the same or better features, though there will always be people who will get behind a blackberry I'm, just not one of those people. If the key one were priced, around $400 I would say it's a definite win, but where it's at right now, I'd, say you're, probably better off going with a 1, +, 3 T, or something in that range. It's a great phone, but it's not what will keep the BlackBerry ship from sinking? It just patched up a couple of holes, but let me know what you think about the key one in the comment section below and be sure to leave this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more like this in the future, thanks again for watching everyone, this is DOM, and I'll catch you in the next video.

Source : Dom Esposito