Blackberry KEYone: Detailed Review Once upon a time, when smartphones were at a nascent stage, a company known as BlackBerry made smar...
Blackberry KEYone: Detailed Review
Once upon a time, when smartphones were at a nascent stage, a company known as BlackBerry made smartphones for the businessman. If you owned a BlackBerry you were taken seriously. People wanted to know your BlackBerry Pin, they wondered how you typed so fast on that small keyboard, they couldn't comprehend how you looked stunning all the time. But most of all, people wanted the phone you had. That’s until a little device called the iPhone came and disrupted the market and people migrated from one to the other.
But Blackberry hasn’t left the building. Not yet anyways. The company has tried to innovate with in the past, with devices like the Passport, Priv, DTEK 50 and more. Today we have the latest offering from BlackBerry – the BlackBerry KeyOne Limited Edition Black. The device is priced at Rs 39,990 pitting it against smartphones like the OnePlus 5, iPhone 6S, LG G6 and more. Does it have what it takes to be the talk of the town once again?
Build and Design
One look at the device and you know this is a BlackBerry smartphone. It’s not only the signature keyboard that gives it away, but the no nonsense square design gives off the same vibe as an expensive suit. Needless to say, that the KeyOne is a smart looking device.
Below the 4.5-inch display you have the physical QWERTY keyboard (more on that later). On the right of the device you have the volume rocker and another button that you think is the power button but it isn’t. It’s the quick launcher button. On the left you have the power button, which is quite inconveniently located.
The capacitive home, back and multitasking buttons are placed below the display, right above the keyboard. Above the display we have the front facing camera and the earpiece. The bottom has the USB-C Port, and the mono speaker.
Coming to the back of the device, it has a textured faux leather feel to it, which not only makes it feel premium but also allows better grip. The space bar doubles up as the fingerprint sensor and is very fast and accurate. No complaints here.
A lot of people thought that the BlackBerry Passport was an un-ergonomic device, but if you used that smartphone to type a lot, then its wide form factor made sense. With the keyOne we have a slimmer version of the Passport and that isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that the device can get slightly uncomfortable for long typing sessions.
Keyboard
Coming to the signature feature of the BlackBerry KeyOne, the keyboard – it is a pleasure to type on once you get used to it. If you are one that has been using a touchscreen keyboard for a long time, then this may take some getting used to. Straight off the bat I can tell you that your typing speed will decrease on this keyboard but your accuracy will increase. The keys are curved slightly at the top, but not as much as previous BlackBerry smartphones (at least I feel this way).
The keyboard has a bunch of nice tricks, some of which we have seen in previous Blackberry devices. To begin with, when you are reading a document or browsing a website, you don’t need to use the touchscreen to scroll. The keyboard doubles up as a touchpad. You can simply swipe to scroll. Speaking of swiping, if you are typing and want to delete a word, just swipe from right to left on the keyboard and the word gets deleted. You can also assign long press and short press shortcuts to the keyboard. This means that you have 52 shortcuts at your disposal from the keyboard. There are more keyboard tricks on the KeyOne and once you get used to them, it can make for a rich typing experience.
Display
The 4.5-inch display on the Blackberry KeyOne has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1080 x 1620 pixels, giving it a pixel density of 433 ppi. The aspect ratio is fine when you work on documents or browse the web, or do anything in portrait mode. Switch to landscape and videos become a problem thanks to the black bars on either side. Playing racing games like Asphalt 8 also becomes annoying. It doesn’t help that the speaker is located below the keyboard so when you use the keyboard as a grip, you end up muffling the speaker.
The display has a peak luminance of 541 lux, which isn’t the highest in this price bracket, but the display is bright enough for both indoor and outdoor usage. The viewing angles though could have been better. The colours produced on the display are crisp and vibrant and look good.
Camera
The rear camera on the BlackBerry KeyOne is a 12MP unit. In daylight, it takes good photos and captures both details and colours. The white balance though wasn’t accurate in some cases. On the plus side, there is a picture where I captured my colleague and behind him was his office PC. Upon enlarging the photo to its full size on my PC monitor, I could make out what he had typed. It wasn’t crystal clear, but the fact that it was legible was good. In well-lit conditions you will be happy with the performance of the camera. In low lit conditions however, the performance of the camera is average at best. The lower the light, the more loss of detail and noise there is.
The front facing 8MP camera also clicks decent selfies in daylight although there are better selfie camera smartphones available at the same price.
The camera app is fairly simple too giving users access to photos, Panorama, video and Slow-mo in the mode menu.
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