Gadgetory

it seems like every phone these days wants to have is big a screen as possible but not the BlackBerry key to the key to which updates last year's blackberry key one is all about the keyboard so let's unbox them I've got the key two in black and in silver these are both the 64 gigabyte version six gigabytes of RAM let's take a look and see what's inside the box we've got the sleeve here and the box just says blackberry key - and very faintly embossed letters this is a very similar box design as last year's key wipe so not that much has changed there our first glimpse of the phone is that it has a sticker with a decal on the front this is to show off the BlackBerry security feature this is sort of a mainstay legacy of the BlackBerry brand this is provided by the actual BlackBerry company that still exists even though the phones are made by a Chinese company that makes all two Alcatel phones so I'm pulling off these sticker tabs it's kind of nice there's actually like a little tab off on the side that makes it easy to pull this off and so you're not digging your fingernails into the plastic and that's it just two pieces of plastic along the top the front in the back which is really nice so right now we are seeing that there is a 4.5 inch screen this is covered in Gorilla Glass right away I noticed that the key 2 has a much more refined design than last year's key 1 the sides are straighter this power button moves from the left side of the device to all three on the right side and there's some texturing on this power button here so that's kind of nice the keyboard I'm gonna flip it around so it faces me the buttons are larger BlackBerry Mobile says the buttons are 20% larger on the key - and they lose this glossy coating from the key one which I didn't like hopefully that's gonna make it a little bit grippier even running my thumb over both keyboards I feel a lot more separation with the key - which is what you want because if you're typing by feel means you'll be able to identify that edges of those keys otherwise the keyboard looks fairly similar you still have the spacebar with that indent it gets a little bit bigger on the key to the indentation is important because not only can you slide your finger above it but it also serves as the fingerprint reader there is a brand new button on the key too as well it's got nine dots this is called the speed key and that is what you use to trigger keyboard shortcuts which we will get to later right now I want to take a look at the rest of the device actually I want to see it in black first so we're gonna go ahead and quickly do all the same things open up the box there we go tip out the phone and here it is in black I don't think we need this plastic so comparing the black to the silver both devices have this kind of tacky rubberized backing that's really great for grip although it isn't the all glass backing or even aluminum backing that you find on a lot of phones today and the silver model does have the BlackBerry logo on the back that shines through and silver a little bit better so I would say that the silver model stands out the black model is much more discreet taking a look at the sides the front top and bottom USB C charging port and a headphone jack on both models I'm gonna continue looking at the silver one here okay so on the front we've got an 8 megapixel camera and on the rear we have dual 12 megapixel cameras this is an upgrade that means you get portrait mode versus on last year's key one where you had a single camera and new portrait mode one of the biggest complaints about the blackberry key one last year was that the phone seemed to be pretty expensive and didn't have as many of the features that a lot of people want on a modern smartphone but the story behind the key one and key to phones is that they're geared for people who really want to be tactile users these are people who like the BlackBerry promise of greater security these are people who want to be more productive and who like the feeling of a physical keyboard this is not a phone for gamers the processor is a qualcomm snapdragon 660 so you're really not going to be throwing a whole lot of photo or resource guzzling games at this it is splash proof but it's not waterproof and that has to do with the keyboard all right I've taken us away from the unboxing we're gonna get back to what's in the box we've got the typical divider and some literature that also includes the SIM card ejector tool that's in here there's the tool and there are the pamphlets and we have the charger this is a pretty big charging brick and the phone does support quick charge 3.0 we've got some headphones to go along with that headphone jack and the USB C charging cable and that is it you've got a nice sturdy box if you want to reuse it for something else maybe organizing your cables at home okay so I'm gonna set up this phone and we'll come back with a little more all right so I've gone ahead and I started some of the setup process on the key to and as with most phones the key to will kind of give you a tutorial to walk you through what some of the more interesting features are so we can see that you're seeing the BlackBerry launcher here there's some description on widgets and what you can do with them and then the shortcut key which is something that I alluded to earlier this is called the speed key as BlackBerry Mobile refers to it the main point is that when you press the speed key and then press your shortcut it will either assign a shortcut if you don't have one or it will launch the shortcut that you have assigned when you swipe off to the side you get the productivity tab this is basically your hub so you can easily look at calendar appointments the weather your to-do lists one thing that I really like about the keyboard in addition to creating the tasks is just the sensitivity here you know the company has thought a lot about what you can do with a physical keyboard in a digital age so if I swipe across the keyboard it's sensitive and I can actually scroll I can go back and forth and if I'm on a webpage I can scroll up and down by simply moving my finger so just now using the physical keyboard I've got to say I'm so out of practice that I'm very clunky and very bad on this thing but I'm gonna go I'm going to practice on it and I will have a full rated review of the BlackBerry key too soon so stick around