Gadgetory

hey what is up guys I'm poppy HD here its 2017 and this is a new blackberry for real this is the blackberry key 1 and it's definitely very much still a blackberry but it's also really well optimised and updated for 2017 this is a tough one because I am definitely not in the target demographic to buy a phone like this this is the phones people who either really really want the physical keyboard or people who really really want a blackberry I am neither of those people but I gave it a shot anyway so BlackBerry has tried all kinds of interesting stuff in recent years with their hardware kind of cuz they have to they tried hiding the keyboard they tried a square phone with a colored keyboard right underneath the square and this one definitely brings it back to classic blackberry this is 1620 by 1080 display up top and a permanent keyboard down there at the bottom available at all times but in tons of ways as you can see it's very well updated for 2017 it's this all-metal build it's really built like a tank tolerances are tight as evenly weighted and the glass was rounded around the edges for this near seamless feel on the hand like the Galaxy s8 and it even has the antenna bands on the outside of the metal frame like the iPhone and every single button and the camera ring are chamfered so just build quality wise it's actually top-notch it's not water-resistant unfortunately but it's definitely more drop resistant than your other top shell flagships like galaxy s 8 or like LG g6 and also this display isn't exactly top-notch I mean I didn't have any scaling issues but it is 1080p and a quad HD world and it also struggles in the brightness Department but when you consider the price this fits right in line with a pretty nice piece of 2017 smartphone hardware it also has USB type-c with fast charging thumbs up there very 2017 and this mid back is this I guess it would be a soft touch plastic with just a little bit of texture I really like this it's a reminder that the slick all glass back is not the only way to enable wireless charging you can do it this way to accept this phone doesn't have wireless charging now I know Jerry rigged everything but I think if phone nine millimeters thick they probably could have found space for that you know what I'm going to say already probably poor use of space but seriously aside from the water resistance and wireless charging this phone is built great in 2017 that is a good sign I think the button placement is a little bit weird or at least take some getting used to instead of the normal power button on the right hand side it actually has the power button on the left hand side and then where the power button used to be is another button called a convenience button and it's like in exactly where the power button usually is but once you get used to this backwardness it's actually a pretty nice feature it lets you map to literally launch any application or shortcut on the whole phone I set mine to launch the Google assistant and it lets me because it's a feature samsung so it's anyone actually thinking about buying this blackberry here's how it does on my five pillars of a great smart phone in a quick snapshot not spectacular but not bad for a $550 smart phone it kind of falls in the upper mid tier but for most people not bad isn't really selling anybody on this phone it really has to have some sort of over-the-top feature some sort of specialty that puts it over the edge and I really think this blackberries over the top specialty feature is customization it started with the remappable convenience button but it goes way further thanks to having a physical keyboard when you're at the home screen you can literally map any of the letters on the keyboard to be their own custom launcher shortcut same thing you can pick any app or any shortcut both for a short press or a long press of that key so each button can launch two different things when you first press an unassigned button it'll give you a suggestion for some apps that start with that letter but of course it's completely up to you and that just makes things so much faster and easier to launch you can have a totally clean home screen so I'm up to short press of the Y key for example to just launch the YouTube app right away so it only takes me a matter of seconds to get into any app I frequently use thanks to these shortcuts in the keyboard and then there are other advantages to having a physical keyboard as well besides just being slightly quicker than a virtual one for example you can do actual keyboard shortcuts like control C and control V and this keyboard also doubles as a trackpad as a sort of a scroll wheel so you can scroll through apps and web pages without getting your finger in the way of the content which is awesome if you can scroll super deep into instagram using this method with no risk of accidental double taps so you're welcome you just got to be careful not to select too hard or you can accidentally hit the home button right above the keyboard I definitely did this a couple times but this is why I find it most useful in landscape mode so keyboard scrolling is definitely awesome here and then when you're typing of course aside from all the keyboard shortcuts you can use swiping up will do autocomplete for the word you're typing helps with some longer words I think and then you can slide backwards across the keyboard to delete your last word this was definitely more useful because we make mistakes all the time when typing and then of course as we probably noticed by now the spacebar also doubles as the singer print reader so you can unlock your phone super quick with just a touch of the spacebar the biggest button on the whole front of the phone very nice integration good use of space there well done so overall this keyboard gets a nod from me again I'm still I'm not in the target demographic for someone who's going to be using a phone with the keyboard like this very much but I could see how someone could get used to it it has a lot of tricks up its sleeve I do wish it had a dedicated number row at the top and I wish the keys were a little bit bigger for my hands but it doesn't and they aren't that's too bad for me alright so question what's the difference between an Android phone with a keyboard and a blackberry key one so software and here on this phone you have a healthy mix of 2017 new Android smartphone and throwback blackberry features that you may or may not find incredibly valuable blackberry hub for example is the same as last year it gathers all your information into one place from texts to emails to Instagram and Twitter basically all your notifications and just piles them into one place so you don't have to wander around checking things and then it lets you dismiss or snooze them with super fine control definitely useful for some but for me I just prefer the regular Android Notification Center bbm you either use it or you don't and then all the BlackBerry DTEC features they're very valuable and work great but some may completely ignore it like they ignore other pre-installed Android security apps on other phones and then all the shortcuts again this keeps with the theme of blackberry giving instant access to everything and tons of customization here all these shortcuts in the BlackBerry launcher give you one touch access to all kinds of little gray things like checking battery stats or starting to compose a new text or email in your app of choice pretty awesome stuff over here I like this theme and then also on the launch or any app that has a widget you can view that widget by swiping on their icon so I can tell which ones have that by which ones have the three dots on the home screen and when you swipe it it just reveals the widget this isn't new it's definitely in some other phones and in some third-party launchers but it's pretty damn convenient if you ask me so there's a lot of cool stuff here and a lot of awesome customization features packed in that I really like but I can still say that at the end of the day it doesn't quite outweigh the cons for me of having so much of your screen chopped off by a physical keyboard that I probably only use very much but at the end of the day this is the best smartphone with the physical keyboard and this is the best BlackBerry ever made so how bad do you want a physical keyboard or a blackberry it's on you let me know thanks for watching I'll talk to you guys in the next one peace