Gadgetory

hello good people Ibrahim with hardware connects and blackberry is officially or inviting me to downtown Toronto for an exclusive briefing for their upcoming BlackBerry smartphone I'm not sure exactly what it is but they are announcing the smartphone on June the 7th it is May the 29th so I do have quite a bit of time to get my hands on the device perhaps come up with my you know first impressions of the new device as well so yeah this is pretty exciting it's blackberry so I'm pretty curious about this let's go check it out all right go people so my briefing with blackberry is complete and I finally have my hands on blackberry key - so this is a successor to the BlackBerry key one if you guys recall I did take a look at that phone phenomenal device for the price and of course it was one my personal favorite our personal favorite smartphones of 2017 if you're interested in the review you can actually check it out right over here but what I'm gonna do right now is just take some b-roll shots of the key - and let's I'll give you guys my first impressions of what I think but first a quick message from our sponsor the new master keys MK 750 keyboard comes with a comfortable magnetic wrist rest beautiful RGB light bar on the perimeter and perky lighting control with a variety of Cherry MX switches and the bottom type-c connection Coolermaster doing it right check it out below so after spending a few hours of the BlackBerry key to of kind of saying I'm interested to see how well the smartphone would do in 2018 from a design standpoint there is nothing significantly different when compared to the key one all BlackBerry has done is sort of refined the edges but making it more edgier the rear side of the phone has also received a different treatment in terms of the texture so now it comes with this rough plastic tester when compared to the soft touch rubberized material that I loved with a blackberry key one so I'm not sure how I would you know get used to this key - when I eventually get my review sample if you recall from my blackberry key one review I mentioned how the convenience key was located at an odd position so what BlackBerry has done is actually relocated that key to the right side of the device so we now have your wall-e markers your power button and of course a communion ski at the same sign for easier access I was even interesting is this convenience key can be reprogrammable to open up any application whether that's a chrome Gmail camera whatever that is you can also have the option to turn it off completely off so I to me personally this is an excellent feature in some cases you could technically make it to trigger a Google assistant but I obviously have to play around with that when I want to get the device in hand later on so definitely stay tuned for our full review now given that this is a BlackBerry device and since the key to is a successor to the key one obviously expect a physical keyboard within the unit and this time they've actually changed the material that they've used to manufacture the key so instead of going with the glossy plastic finish now we've get a matte black finish which is great I love the texture of the keys it's a lot more easier to type with because with the key one I sort of got to a point where when grease and sort of other things gets in the way it kind of feels awkward to type with the keyboard and sometimes you could end up you know slipping or you might end up missing a certain keys so with the matte finish it actually sort of eliminates that problem and actually looks a lot more sleeker one of the cool features of the BlackBerry key too is the addition of the speed key it's essentially located right beside the spacebar key which by the way still acts as a fingerprint reader so what the speed key does is that you can assign it to open a certain application while you're in a full screen app for example if I'm you know browsing the web and if I want to check Instagram I can just hold this speed key and hit I and it'll automatically open up Instagram without having me to go back to the home screen and open that application now given that there are 52 or 53 buttons on the BlackBerry key one the amount of customizability is just endless you can basically assign every app that you have on your smartphone to a certain key and you can use the speed key to open up those applications instantly the only thing is obviously memorizing those shortcuts because you know they'll be quite challenging but I think it's a pretty cool feature now during my briefing with blackberry one of the things that they did emphasize a lot more was on added security and level of protection that they want to offer customers with so first and foremost it's the inclusion of DTEC and what they have done to sort of enhance and improve the built in or the app that normally comes pre-installed with blackberry key one and of course the key to so what they've done is they've redesigned that UI they made things lock cleaner but what they've also done is given a more divided features like you know being able to scan applications in the background so for example if you have an application that's accessing your microphone microphone without your knowledge the app will pop up or bring up a notification saying hey this app is using a microphone would you want to take a certain action and you can certainly go into settings and can sort of disable that it gives it just gives users the flexibility and the control of you know what features or what are some of the things that certain apps are accessing now you could technically do this within enjoyed within the OS within the settings app but I'd be interested to see how this would do when I eventually test the device now when it comes to specs well I would keep your expectations low because if you're someone who's looking for flagship level of specs on a BlackBerry smartphone this is not it the key to is not for you because they decided to go with a snapdragon 616 sir instead of a snapdragon here 45 and when I asked blackberry about it they said that they wanted to you know put inside a chip said that's more power-efficient but yet can still deliver fast performance and I guess in a way I could go with what they're saying here because you know if we can find a way to sort of compensate or extend battery life with going for a power fish-and-chip but also you know running apps faster that's great in fact when I did review the BlackBerry key one performance was just fantastic it was not running a flagship CPU it was running a basic mid tier CPU so I mean to me I think that's ok but obviously I'd love to hear your thoughts on that the key to comes in two color variants so you've got your standard black and silver trim and of course your all black trim so there are no special black editions going on around here just like the key one it's just called the BlackBerry key - and that's pretty much it there's six gigabytes of RAM 64 gigabytes of on-board storage in some select regions you can actually opt for a 120 gigabyte variant but you can also expand the storage which is awesome now the battery capacity hasn't increased that much they've still kept the same amount of capacity just like the key one so it is a little bit on the disappointing side but again it being interesting to see how the battery life would hold up when I'm actually again the key to test sample the display on the key 2 is exactly the same when compared the key one you're getting the same 4.5 inch 16 20 by 1080 IPS display it's nothing significant it's a little bit disappointing because I was expecting you know a little bit more pixels maybe give us Q HDS in some variants but it is what we're working with but I'd be interesting to see how that holds up in 2018 now given that we've witnessed smartphones in 2018 come with dual cameras I guess blackberry took the same route by implementing to 12 megapixel cameras both at different focal lengths so the wide-angle lens comes with an f1 point in aperture and the optical zoom lens comes with an f2 0.6 aperture so you're gonna be losing a little bit of light they are using different sensors when compared the key one remember the key one had sensor on the Google pixel so it is interesting to see all I will be interesting to test out what the camera performance is like BlackBerry has said that have improved the hardware and the software optimization when it comes to processing images so again I will have to test out the BlackBerry key - especially when it comes to cameras to see how that holds up with the pixel - and of course other flagships in 2018 ask for software the key to is rocking Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box and BlackBerry has promised the Android be upgrade later on and what he's really on is the price point for the blackberry key - so the base model the one that comes with 64 gigabytes of storage 6 gigabytes of RAM Snapdragon 660 in this all new not only more of it or fine design when you compare the key one it's gonna run you 650 dollars us I have mixed feelings about that price point because it puts it right in line with the 1 + 6 the the one the Google pixel 2 and a few other smartphones so I mean again I'd love to see how this would hold up in 2018 now BlackBerry isn't advertising the key - as a flash of killer it's really targeted towards a niche market you know people who are blackberry loyalists you know not people who are looking for a smartphone with the best possible display the best possible specs build quality and battery life it is targeted towards a certain type of people people who are people are looking for smartphones with a physical keyboard now the lack of wireless charging and lack of ip68 water-resistant rating could be a few deal breaking features for some of you out there but again I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts on the key - what do you guys think about it do you think BlackBerry has a shot with the key - and would you be actually willing to pick one up let me know the comments down below i'm eber with hydra connects stay tuned for our full review of the blackberry key - once it's launched and of course when I get back from copy Tex I'm ebert with harbor connects thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one