Gadgetory

all right so I'm gonna be completely transparent as we start a review of the BlackBerry key - I was super excited when this phone came in and usually I can put my exuberance or lack thereof depending on which phone I'm reviewing aside but the Corgi key - got me pumped but now after almost two weeks of using the phone did that excitement stay I'm John render from TechnoBuffalo and this is our review of the BlackBerry key - I was a pretty big fan of the key one I like to stop and reveal of BlackBerry's UI but the keyboard was just too cramped for my taste in a display left a lot to be desired but man that sweep battery life but I am happy to report the BlackBerry fixed most the grapes the physical keyboard which I promised I will talk way more about is now 20% larger it's actually taller going to be more specific making typing surprisingly easy I still have like a two to three day learning curve to readjust my brain and my fingers get used to a physical keyboard but once I did it was great and the key throw is tactile enough to be satisfying that's a word the same around the keys are matte as opposed to gloss which decided from just looking better drastically improve the typing experience so a cool thing about having a physical keyboard aside from surprisingly being a really good conversation starter is each key can essentially be a shortcut it sounds awesome in theory but in practice it wasn't fully baked - last gen you got to be exited out of an app and on the home screen to call up a shortcut it was still useful but not as much as it could be so enter at the speed key that little nine dots towards the bottom of the keyboard fixes that issue and lets you access shortcuts from any app all i got it was just push it and then the key you've got assigned and i want to give blackberries credit here for listening to feedback the keyboard is also kind of a trackpad letting you scroll through websites home screens or anything else that you'd have to use a touchscreen for it's a really nice touch I found myself getting used to the keyboard the functionality provided granted trying to type in numbers is sometimes tricky with the Alt key but it's a very small compromise and when I was happy to make blackberry changed a lot about the key - but one thing they didn't change the key one is it which is kind of a bummer size-wise it's still good it's 4.5 inches it gives you plenty of real estate the 433 PPI and 1620 or by 1080 panel just looks man to me now I get some compromises had to be made to hit that 650 price tag but I do want to mention is $100 more than the key one when it launched but color going in it's not the strongest part of the phone also note the three-point you aspect ratio is going to take some getting used to what blackberry didn't bring in the screen Department they certainly did in the RAM category surprisingly this comes with 6 gigabytes the key one started to really bogged down for me after a few months so I'm gonna assume the extra RAM here will help during my two weeks the phone felt fast and fast as any other phone even those with a faster Snapdragon chipset but I will be looking for slowdown as we do our longer tests and do a three month later video if you guys want another area that's improved is just the overall build of the phone it's pretty awesome a blackberry is able to increase the keyboard size and keep the overall size of the phone the same and there's no getting around the this feels like a brick design language but at least no knotch so blackberry moved all the keys to the right side of the device this time which is nice and always the convenience key can be mapped to anything you want imagine that me I just mapped it to the camera and since I set myself up perfectly for that smooth transition let's let's talk about the camera it's got two on the back which blackberry was super pumped to point out as a first for them the cameras aren't really remarkable both are 12 megapixels with one being telephoto giving a 2 X optical zoom prick tably it also gives portrait mode that's the price of entry in 2018 I'm not gonna go too much into it but it does a pretty solid job at the bouquet blur the rest of the pictures are unremarkable not bad just not amazing color reproduction is good low-light shows a ton of noise if you zoom in you're also gonna see a ton of artifacting a lot of replacing a DSLR with this you'll be disappointed and also never do that with the phone if you want an average shooter the moral is you're gonna be fine the front camera is 8 megapixel and surprised that you do full manual control for everything except for out of focus that was a nice surprise a 35 hundred million power battery would be big for any phone when you factor in this sighs with a phone running a less power-hungry processor and a screen that's not pushing crazy pixels you've got something magical professionally us a holy battery this thing lasted longer than anything else I can ever remember testing I could easily get through two plus days of usage which for me is unheard of especially with my borderline phone addiction if you own a phone is the best battery life to get a key to be done with it when you eventually charge it you can do it via USB see it's compatible with USB power delivery 2.0 and quick charge 3.0 although I guess I'm nitpicking here but wireless charging would have been nice on the software side it's Android 8.1 base and is really close to a stock Android one experience and I'll admit I did try to make it a pixel beary with the launcher during my last days testing but I do really dig what BlackBerry's done it didn't owing me a little bit for the dock has an icon taken up by the app drawer I just got really used to the swipe up on other phones the productivity tab you can swipe into was also surprisingly useful DTEC adzick of security but honestly if you like a stock android feel this phone's going to be very familiar so the key to is not a perfect phone and it's clearly not for everyone but I'd imagine you already know going in if this phone's going to be for you but you have an open mind what you're gonna get is a Productivity powerhouse a phone that a lot of people are gonna want to talk to you about keyboard that offers a ton of shortcuts and a phone that's overall a pleasure to use and it's going to last you for days and days which is really rare in today's power-hungry smartphones so question I asked the beginning did the excitement and wear off on the key - and the answer is no it didn't I really enjoyed using the phone I'm wary of that slowdown on the lack that I had with the key one again I'll be watching for it but if you want a phone that's gonna be great for productivity it's gonna be point for typing emails it's gonna be different than what else is out there and do it all without having a knotch and not break your bank but break e2 is a really good choice so reminded me of the old days reviewing the BlackBerry again what do you guys think about the key - I'm generally curious if you would buy it 650 bucks will not flagship price it's still competing with a lot of phones and a lot of are very well SPECT if you're gonna pick up the key - I'd love to know why if you're skipping it also let me know in the comments down below and of course all the other stuff please that YouTube makes us do because I don't send notifications anymore subscribe and if Cobell to get notified in theory when new videos are coming out we got a lot of awesome stuff coming new vs videos new series launching I don't want you guys to miss anything so next time John render from TechnoBuffalo