Gadgetory

BlackBerry's looking to make a comeback by doing what I've been saying they should do for years make an Android phone though its name might be a little weird it is short for privacy and perhaps appropriately privileged and that's because this is a phone that stands out in more ways than one but how does it stack up in an already crowded Android space it's time to find out because it's Josh of agar from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is the BlackBerry priya blackberry makes a splash or rather a slide right into the Android space by bringing back a feature that we haven't seen in a long time a hardware keyboard but before we get to that let's take a look at the rest of the device which BlackBerry has done a good job of making fit into the general Android lexicon the large 5 point 4 inch screen has no capacitive keys accompanying it but at the very bottom portion of the phone that does not slide there is a front facing speaker we have the power Bunn on the left side and then the volume rocker on the right with a single button in the middle in my testing this button doesn't really do anything but open the notification dialogue to switch modes the back of the phone is of a soft plastic weave that helps with the grip so it definitely isn't going to slide about in your hand up top is the camera optic package that does stick out but the ring around the glass is pretty substantial so let's finally slide that screen up it slides up assuredly but it doesn't snap with a snikt like other sliders you might remember instead it smoothly moves up and softly locks into place features of the keyboard will be delved into in the hardware and software section so we'll focus on the feel of the keyboard though it takes on the classic blackberry construction and layout it does ultimately feel a bit squishy and that's because it takes a while to get used to typing on a physical keyboard again as the keys obviously require a tiny but noticeable bit of force it's probably a pretty safe bet to say that your muscle memory needs to get acclimated to the keyboard again and when extended the already large phone all-around is harder to maneuver when the screen is farther away for even the most experienced hand gymnasts to reach the BlackBerry probe is a very executive looking device and we love its look and feel however because you do have that slide up screen and that keyboard we're not surprised to find that the period of cuts a couple of corners for one thing it's not necessarily required that phones need to have metal in order to be considered premium but if metal is what you're looking forward to in the Android space then you're just not going to get it here after that the backing despite having a very good grip to it does seem to press in a little bit seems just that tiny bit flimsy when you put a little bit of force on the lower half and also I did find it a little bit weird that I got into the habit of sliding up the screen to wake the device even if I wasn't even going to use the keyboard blackberry despite not being part of the full flagship game for a while has worked to ensure that they include all the right features in their first Android phone and the display is a good example of that not only doesn't come in the high quad HD resolution but it leverages that pixel density into a panel that is 5.4 inches large couple with that in AMOLED construction and it's not hard to see that Blackberry put some real thought into here the screen is plenty good with the right color saturation for some good eye candy especially considering all that the BBU version of Android can do and text is really sharp for a phone that especially for the working types will be able to show all of the web articles tasks and calendar entries thrown at it not only is it enjoyable to use it shows the company is definitely trying here and actually the same can be mostly said for the processing package though not the latest and greatest the Snapdragon 808 is more than enough for the BlackBerry Prive the 808 is backed by the audrina 418 and three gigabytes of RAM all good specs to have for a phone made for work but we haven't had any problems with just about anything on this device though there are some stutters and bugs that we run into and we felt that was more the fault of BlackBerry's own Android iteration game still go along without much incidents as do media and general web browsing most of the work that the BlackBerry faithful will probably do on here involve the built-in hub and productivity tools all of which proves snappy for simply getting things done now when blackberry gets an even better handle on their version of Android we're sure that the performance aspect will improve but currently the proof is still more than able to get the job done which brings us to hardware which is a laundry list of good choices made by blackberry we start off with the front facing speaker which is in and of itself a great choice and provides decent sound it skews toward the higher ends just a bit and could use a little more volume but it's still better than any rear-mounted units above that phone speaker are two trays for this phone sim and microSD yes blackberries stuck to having expandable storage to bolster the 32 already Tim and for such a large phone a big battery unit is ideal if not required and a pretty substantial 34 10 milliamp hour battery has been tucked into this phone longevity has been a pretty average affair unfortunately there's likely quite a bit going on at all times if you do leverage all of BlackBerry's features and the hub so we aren't particularly surprised a couple of my colleagues here at Android Authority actually have the privilege to battery life and we found that the results were really mixed nerve was able to get close to five hours of screen on time but that was actually quite rarely more often than not he got around three hours for normal usage lon on the other hand had trouble actually getting that three hour screen on time average and I found that that was my case as well I'm somewhat in the middle because on a heavier day I got maybe two and a half hours maybe two hours and 45 minutes and then on a regular usage day that mostly involves podcasts and music playing and a little bit of GPS navigation at one point did I get three and a half hours but it really didn't happen all that much apparently fast charging is built-in but you need to have a compatible charging solution in order to leverage it even to that end the battery took a couple of hours to fully charge up from zero and finally we get to the biggest difference this phone has had over the rest the physical keyboard slide the screen up and the keyboard lowers the on-screen one freeing up all that space on the screen and the keys take a look getting used to as we mentioned before so your mileage will vary when it comes to typing fast in fact we found this out in an informal typing test when I was on all about Android earlier this week swiping tap typing and the physical keyboard were all put against each other and I just barely missed the finals using the BlackBerry Prive but my experience is kind of specific I'm a very fast typer on-screen keyboards like flexi and actually the very good blackberry on screen iteration but there are other uses for the keyboard if typing occurs pretty much anywhere else in the interface either an automatic Google search triggers or any short or long presses can be used to trigger shortcuts and the entire keyboard is outfitted with touch and swipe sensitivity so that tasks like scrolling a web page can be done by lightly passing the finger over the hardware keys so though typing speed will probably be different for just about everyone there are these extra features that make the cube useful despite all that we found ourselves using the touchpad like a scroll quite often as well as a few shortcuts for easy access to particular tasks the BlackBerry Prive looks to make good moves in the camera department by employing an 18 megapixel shooter with optical image stabilization and optics made by a reputable European company a misstep in the camera department is obvious right away though because the front-facing shooter only packs 2 megapixels BlackBerry's camera application is a big tell that they've been out of the loop recently it's not only rather rudimentary in its design but it is actually quite slow in processing only a few modes are available from video to panorama and HDR is actually auto capable manual controls are missing aside from the ability to change the exposure compensation shooting pictures takes a solid second to do and even more if you have HDR on we found that the only way of shaving time off the shutter press is to change the picture quality from fine to standard but I only helped a little and by far the one thing we really don't like about this camera app is that it goes back to default settings each time it's opened as a person who almost always shoots without flash having to turn it off every single time got annoying really fast it's an analogy for the camera quality that Blackberry is showing just how new they are in what has already become a great camera space in Android this year the optics are capable of some good data capture but processing looks to be the worst part of it pictures in bright light look quite good with adequate color saturation and a bit of a boost in HDR but lower light situations really show the flaws processing is a little too aggressive so low-light photos tend to look quite smudgy add to that sensitive auto white balancing and sometimes low-light pictures can just be too warm which is another reason why I don't prefer spot metering for pretty much any camera the privat ends to overcompensate for the very spot you pick either making the surrounding areas way too blown out or too dark and this is also the case in video as well where low-light performance is the biggest issue that we saw overall the blackberry proof camera is the biggest example of the company's good intentions and poor execution whereas other companies have evolved their cameras and feature set and processing blackberry simply has a lot of ground to make up in a short amount of time if their follow-ups to the Prive to be true competition against the likes of Samsung or LG and finally in software Android is the main story here as blackberry has adopted Google's OS in hopes of becoming relevance again and they've done a pretty good job with it despite trying just a little too hard in key areas the general interface is very familiar with home screens and widgets easily within reach and an Abbe drawer that includes the old pages for widgets and all of the shortcuts that used to permeate the operating system these little shortcuts can be tied to any of the keyboard shortcuts so with some due diligence the keyboard can become a very powerful tool but there are some extra features somewhat hidden within those three dots under icons in the home screen mean that if you swipe up from it a pop-up widget will appear which is a great way of saving space on the actual home screens even then swiping up from the home soft key can be cater to any applications that you might need easy access to notifications have been grouped together in a line of icons at the top of the drop down can easily sort them this is a great way for seeing only what you need rather than getting inundated with information and as I mentioned earlier the BlackBerry on-screen keyboard is actually a pretty stellar performer swipes up from the next letter in a word can put the suggested word in and then swipes to the left delete whole words which is actually a personal requirement that I have in a keyboard BlackBerry's additions baked into the general shell of Android have actually been producible I'm but it's when blackberry tried to start adding in layers and apps on top of all of it that we found some issues mainly it's how blackberry stuck to its guns for a number of functions bbm for example is a nostalgic return to a once ubiquitous messaging network that no one uses anymore for security D Tech is the way to see if the phone is as safe as it can be these features can be anything from setting a lock screen to encrypting the entire device for the general user it's a good way of getting into some better habits when it comes to security but on the other hand the app will show all the applications and what they're doing in the phone as well as logging events so that you can look back and see what the heck just happened and for all tasks and messaging services the BlackBerry hub is the built-in way of consolidating at all open it up set up gmail accounts and even some social media and you'll have everything in one place it works well enough and picking specific accounts to dial down the information how but if you already have an african solid dating all of your emails this might not do it for you for one thing there's no unified login for the hub so you have to set up every little one little by little to that end the hub needs to be updated to support some main features in Gmail namely the ability to archive messages rather than just flat-out deleting them and also to search more than just the amount that has been synced to it by default that's about one week push notifications are available for all accounts but by default it checks every 15 minutes for a new message a relic of a long past generation of smartphones but the hub does have one really nice feature which is triggered by swiping from a specific area on the side of the screen a quick access area allows you access to the most recent messages in the hub as well as calendar and tasks entries that make for an easy way to maintain productivity so blackberry clearly knows how to make Android work for its own purposes with extra little features baked into the core of the interface but the fundamental uses for their long-standing applications are not quite updated for today's Android users of course you can just not use the BlackBerry applications and then have a mostly stock Android experience on here but that's a bit of a boon to what blackberry is trying to do here the BlackBerry Prive is available now for the very premium price of six hundred and ninety nine dollars on paper it makes a little bit of sense but still feels a bit steep and that's because we go back to what proof means mainly privilege for a lot of money you may be paying to be a part of the nostalgia that just the name blackberry evokes the brand used to be iconic and in the wake of a declining public image the privet is supposed to be the film that brought them back into the limelight but by prioritizing features like the keyboard and security measures that don't simply fit in with the general Android lexicon blackberry is also selling exclusivity by getting this phone you just might be part of a privileged group that not only still believes in the brand but can manage to drop the high price for what is BlackBerry's first attempt at Android the company has to improve the features that users often require of current Android flagships like the camera and a bit better ease of use in the operating system if blackberry manages to stick around long enough and learn from its competitors we just might see a we'll come back for a company that especially now manages to still be fundamentally different from what we've had the last couple of years as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this pretty comprehensive review of the BlackBerry pre if we have to take our time with this one because it's kind of a new anomaly in the Android space not only a phone that has a physical keyboard now but is made by a company that we haven't necessarily heard a lot from in a while it is a pretty good device that got quite a few things right but it's not for everybody because they tried a little too hard in a few aspects when the rest of them should have been focused upon as well keep it tuned to Android authority for all of the best coverage including more about the BlackBerry Priven you can see more content from my colleagues in Android right over on the side don't forget to head over to the corner where you can find the Android 30 app where you can find all of our great content and then stick around to Android Authority comm because we are your source for all things Android