I care about you guys too much to just
come out and say the BlackBerry g2 is
bad don't buy it
possibly preventing you from buying one
and loving it
just because of my horrible first
impressions so I actually spent the last
four weeks with this thing as my daily
driver
now the TLDR is still I don't like it
and I don't recommend it so you can I
guess you can stop watching now if
that's all you wanted to know but I
would really appreciate it if you suffer
through the rest of this video with me
so that I can feel like the effort
wasn't for nothing
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not everything about the BlackBerry
ki-suh is bad
not even close actually for example it's
black I like the color black and on
paper its features are actually pretty
complete for the year 2018 spec wise
only the mid-tier snapdragon 616 zout is
inappropriate given the phone six
hundred and fifty dollar off contract
price for the six gig 64 gig storage
version and TCL who licenses blackberry
software and the BlackBerry name for
this hardware has even avoided some of
the annoyances of modern devices by
including a headphone jack and allowing
user upgradeable storage through a micro
SD card it's just too bad that they
created a whole lot of other annoyances
while they were at it let's start with
the keyboard before going any further
it's probably important to provide some
context I rocked a blackberry 8700 for a
couple of years back in the late 2000s
and I actually loved that thing I used
to love my blackberry I still do the
BlackBerry key - and at the time it felt
like a huge typing downgrade when I
transitioned to the iPhone 4 in 2010 I
bought an iPhone 4 unfortunately for the
BlackBerry brand on-screen keyboards
have improved a lot since iOS 4 and
Bears has gotten worse so I came in
expecting the key to to feel like the
embrace of an old friend and it ended up
being more like making love to a
stranger responding to my touch in ways
I didn't expect or understand and then
constantly punishing me for doing things
wrong the smile
keyboard layout that made the keys on
older blackberries feel offset like a
desktop keyboard instead of a grid is
gone and so are the gaps between the
keys that are ever so important
especially if you have bigger fingers -
finding your way around without looking
and I get that I'm a bit of a
punctuation nerd by the standards of
that
that's not generation but no dedicated
period key drove me absolutely bonkers
now there are some really neat features
you can program shortcut key combos like
little mini macros to launch apps you
can reprogram the currency key and you
can customize the layout of the symbol
key menu which is really nice and this
one too actually took me a week to
figure out but you can swipe back just
over top of the keys to backspace you
can swipe up on the corresponding part
of the keyboard to accept an autocorrect
prediction and you can even swipe style
type on these physical keys if you want
the issue here is just that if I wanted
to do those things especially that last
one I could do them on a software
keyboard and then I could even get back
the context-sensitive functionality of a
software keyboard like a single button
press 4.com which takes five button
presses here and vast menu of emojis
while I'm at it
not to mention all of the other things
that I can do with more screen real
estate I mean the funny thing about this
is I actually went straight from the
find X to this thing and going from 87%
screen to body ratio to about 55 was a
shock now the quality of the display is
fine it actually so are the speakers for
that matter except there's no stereo
effect but everything from movies that
look like they are both pillar and
letterbox due to the wonky 3x2 aspect
ratio to even reading text articles was
a bad experience when it comes to
content consumption and that's not
something that can be improved I mean
back to reading more and more mobile web
content is designed around the
full-screen experience with many
smartphone manufacturers going as far as
to remove even software buttons in favor
of gestures and like look at this page
that I screen captured here it manages
to show only a tiny amount of actual
vertical with the rest taken up by a
highlighted quote and an ad so you end
up doing a lot of scrolling something
that I found particularly under Gunawan
about this phone and that's due to the
position of the non reconfigurable
Hardware nav buttons that sit between
the keyboard and the screen I ended up
accidentally hitting those from time to
time both when using the screen for
scrolling and when swiping over top of
the keyboard for scrolling now
BlackBerry's argument actually had a
call with them about this is that this
is a communication device not a content
consumption device but surely even the
world's most boring executive might want
to watch a TED talk or take a picture of
the grandkids or something I mean for me
this it was really frustrating because
normally I try to full switch to a
device that I'm reviewing that's how I
find some of the annoyances that other
people might miss but I had to pull the
iPhone out of my back pocket a lot with
this one to take pictures and videos
like you'll get usable shots sometimes
and it's certainly better than having
nothing but look at these artifacts
around my daughter's face in this shot I
don't remember the last time I saw
anything like that so then with all that
in mind that communication experience
better be amazing so let's talk about
that then fantastic battery life that's
a phone that I haven't had to charge for
two days check easy access to contacts
and calendars just swiping over from the
right check that to configurable
convenience key profiles for homework
and driving well it beats they ever live
and crap out of some of the you know
extra side button functionality that
I've seen and the BlackBerry hub does in
fairness a pretty good job of
aggregating all of your communication
streams in one place if you're the kind
of person who finds yourself easily
confused by multiple apps so okay
obnoxious default email signature aside
there are definitely some baby boomers
that I wish I could
this too in particular the BlackBerry
hub but it just comes with in my opinion
too many compromises I mean a big part
of BlackBerry's argument for these
licensed phones running they're
validated software is Blackberry grade
security and D Tech is actually
admittedly very cool it gives you an
easy way to do a security check up on
your phone and for me more importantly
see exactly what the crap your apps are
doing with those permissions that you
granted them both in the foreground and
the background with timestamps on
everything and from reading through a
blackberry provided white paper it looks
like there actually are still a lot of
enterprise grade security and management
features here that I'm not aware of
Android or iOS equivalents for but this
is a consumer focused channel and from a
consumer standpoint frankly I would
rather see some kind of commitment to
future Android updates versus some of
these features I mean the Prive launched
in late 2015 and never even got nougat
so bottom line is I think the neighbor
kid actually put it pretty well when he
roll up on his bike and the first thing
out of his mouth when he saw my phone
was hey that's weird that looks like an
old-school blackberry but with the
touchscreen so the conclusion is what it
is for every blackberry phone review if
you really like blackberries have fun if
you don't there's frankly nothing about
this one that is likely to change your
mind speaking of changing your mind if
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enter Linus tech tips in the how did you
hear about us section so thanks for
watching guys if this video sucked you
know
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which you should totally join by the way
for those of you wondering why exactly
the find X still has like a sticker on
the back and stuff okay when I switched
from this to the key to I was switching
from the engineering sample this to the
key to this is my retail one this just
arrived today I will be starting my
review of this today thank freaking
goodness I'm done with that thing it's
like annoying in ways that were hard to
find a way to write into a script like
when you can't say what's bad about it
but it's just not pleasant it's like a
you know like an awkward foot massage
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