Gadgetory

well ladies and gentlemen boys and girls I am super excited to introduce to reintroduce to have the familial homecoming of one mr. Steven shank the man the myth the legend from phone arena welcome back to the pocket now so much for having me this is great been too long too long I mean we've been bumping into each other in trade shows and stuff but I've really been enjoying your work over phone arena I think you're doing those guys super proud and just that we can always point you like now that if it used to be my buddy over on the baggage I watched as the rookies all growed up ah thank you very much it's been a huge adjustment doing this whole different type of concept over there but I'm loving it it's great yeah I mean I think you took the video really well man I mean I always enjoyed our time together on this podcast and I'm really happy to see you thriving over there and and get my face up but you know it's it's it's kind of a head trip right you know like I'm I'm putting myself out there to tell a story and I need to know what story it is I'm trying to tell and I think that's kind of a sink or swim moment for a lot of content producers especially people who came more from the editorial is writing to then shifting over into editorial as video and so it's why I've been so stoked especially for what we have to talk about today yeah very key one because I think you guys produce I mean like I think all of our audience would know by now there's an embargo that obviously lifted this morning as dozens of library reviews the floodgates I chose were dumped onto the internet but I really enjoyed your guys commentary at phone arena I am I think it's right up there pretty close to our review yeah see I'm surprised everyone seems to have the same sentiments about this phone because when we first heard about this we got some lovin a few months ago peaks at CES saw more at MWC and everyone's like okay it's you know middle-of-the-road it's got a keyboard but so what but but how the reviews are out I think more often than not people are changing their tunes and like this is actually a pretty solid little phone here to to our surprise I was really expecting I'm do you you kicked it off that way I was really expecting a bit more pushback on this notion of nostalgia or retro you know rebooting a classic idea just like we get cranky about rebooting film series but really it kind of just seems like there was a cranky article on nine-to-five Google David Roddick seems to be anti Hardware anymore dan I'm not terribly surprised by that over at Android police but on the whole yeah I'm kind of with you I think this phone is one of those devices that doesn't give off maybe the most impressive first impressions but it's definitely one that I think benefits from a little extra time and using it oh absolutely yeah new hardware keyboards are interesting I first when I got my first smartphone it was a Motorola og drawer you know the slider yeah landscape orientation keyboard and I thought coming from there you know very hardware keyboard PC world I'm gonna need a phone if I want to type on the right one and I do want to I'm going to need some way to feel like I'm actually inputting text in a way that's your tactile and familiar to me and it didn't actually work that way right because you know the using the thumbs and tiny little clicks try wasn't key travel it's not the same experience as a keyboard and so then I was in this kind of like middle ground for a while waiting for software keyboards to catch up but now they have I thought I was a software man forever but this key one I think it has been reconsidering things well and I think it's important to point I you know one of the one of the things I really enjoyed in the commentary from your videos is also just this notion that it's okay for a phone to have a specific target demographic or have a specific audience in mind and to to maybe not be the best all-rounder I think we can both agree maybe this isn't the best multimedia device surprising outgoes camera but it's not really the kind of phone I want to sit and watch a movie on or play a bunch of games on or anything like that but to then focus in on the aspects of mobile communications on getting to done on productivity and really giving a compelling reason as to why it's a good solution for that is actually kind of fresh in a where I think so many manufacturers are trying to copy general all-rounder success you know iPhones and galaxies um I think that's opening up pockets of these little pockets where a niche success could actually you know if you can corner the niche area like productivity then that is actually a way for your company to stand out from the rest of the pack more than sport activity though you talk about finding an audience for a device I think Gizmodo had a really interesting take on this coming I think the perfect phone for Kim Kardashian and they're not wrong here if you're really into social media I don't know texting a lot o writing short magical like and the camera you have this great combination yet absolutely with the rear camera and and I think what's funny is like would Kim Kardashian benefit more from having a really killer rear camera or from having a better selfie camera that has all the beauty filter luring skin mannequin moves like I need to distort my face so that no one can see that I'm actually a human being who's lived on the earth for a significant you know a portion of time just smear some Vaseline on the way is again it's such a small lens I mean that's that's a really accurate lens smearing I think you'd have to pull off there so I wit while I really absolutely want people to check out individual reviews to see the different counter points and I'm a covered the main review for our channel I was tasked with getting some of the techie stuff out of the way like the camera review and tomorrow we're going to be publishing our audio review I wanted to get your take sort of summed up in a nutshell for people like I want them to go see your review but if you could share some of your experiences in using this phone because I think it is it's an experience worth talking about with a little nuance because it's not like every single phone that's going to be released this year know it's a phone that you know going into I'd expect this to SPECT it to be a one-trick pony it has a keyboard and you're buying this because you want a phone that has a keyboard and nothing else does but there are a handful of areas where it really excels and these aren't probably the ones most people when they think about a really high-profile flagship phone look too it doesn't have a giant high-res screen it doesn't have the fastest performance out there in fact it wouldn't be the fastest performance if this came out a year ago but it's got that keyboard right the camera is is decent this is as a lot of people have noted the same the rear camera the same sensor that Google used or HTC use for the pixel the software processing is nowhere near as impressive as the pixel does but still starting from a really really strong place but we haven't mentioned this yet if there's one thing this phone one standout reason to get this it's the battery life oh my god I've got north of 12 hours like nearly 13 with the screen on the entire time and this is easily a device you can charge once and then use it all weekend and if you're not going crazy and think about the things that consume a lot of battery life a media consumption and gaming which you're probably not going to be doing a lot of with this phone so kind of the use cases filter into you with this great hardware the combination of the 6:25 Snapdragon chip and that 35 hundred million power battery just like the perfect storm for insane battery yeah because I mean I I spent your your scenario there spending a weekend with it my very first weekend charging the phone up actually getting all of my stuff over all my accounts signed in and I have a ton of screen off usage it's why I typically don't really publicize screen on times in my reviews is because driving around in Southern California I we use my phones a lot with the screen off they're connected to my car computer they're connected to my in - audio the in - entertainment system connected to a SmartWatch I mean they're constantly pumping information around I just don't have this run right and so from pulling the phone off the charger on Saturday morning at around 8 a.m. I did not get a low battery warning until 60 hours of use later yeah that sounds just about right that's insane and so I can completely appreciate where people are looking to their phones as sort of a total package idea and they want to have the notion of they want to be fulfilled like I have the best you know like a Samsung or an Apple I think can really sell this notion of it's the best even if we rationally know like not every feature is actually the best on this phone um while while we can point to some of the deficiencies in something like high graphics intensive gaming I did not feel like I was really sacrificing much for my normal running gun got to communicate I'm plugged into social media you know 20 hours a day I'm shooting a lot of content from the camera and I'm listening to podcasts almost the entire time I've got the phone in my pocket and this phone never really seemed to miss a beat it didn't really seem to hold me up at all no the only bottlenecks I ever saw occasionally some issues with web browsing a little stuttering while scrolling and I hit a few RAM problems where multitasking apps you could see them reloading into memory rather than popping right out certainly the three gigabytes of RAM is a situation I would have liked this each that's the one speck I think I would change 32 gigs of storage and it's fine for what this is and again the 625 I can live with the performance because that is what's responsible for this battery life you totally as I would not trade that for it and I can more rarely agree with you on on some of the multitasking aspects like back blackberry is so far removed from this market that we've I don't know about you but I kind of stopped trying to organize my communication in the way that blackberry used to back in the day so for I think their solution I don't think they're wrong I just think they're you know it's something that people need to retrain themselves is the notion of the hub so I think the hub is very smart so that you don't have to run up into that RAM limit but that's not really how I organize my thoughts and my communications anymore and it's tough getting back into this one window where all these like tweets and Facebook messages and emails accesses or that you mentioned I just don't think that way anymore so this was the first BlackBerry device I've ever used so hub this new experience because I I couldn't I couldn't get into it I you know I'm trained to get all of my notifications from the the disparate apps that provide these services and having them all in one place I can see the appeal of that but I'm just getting two notifications for everything I'm getting my Gmail and the hub telling me the email is coming in I can see if you're in the ecosystem why these are appealing in bbm as well if you're into it cool but if you're already an established user of I know whatsapp or even just Google Voice or something it's tricky to find a reason to switch over so so this phone but the great thing is you don't have to buy this for all the BlackBerry software and I think that was what people were worried about we saw blackberry becoming an Android based platform they're going to sell this on the value-add and for me there's not a ton of value to the blackberry specific software things the D Tech security that's cool I like how it gives a nice visual indication and easy you like overview of your phone security it doesn't really appeal to me but I can see the users who it does appeal to yeah I'm in that I'm in that ballpark I want my star trek readout you know shield strength 70% but that's not going to be a main selling point for any no and that's great because security is a really complicated thing and making it simple for someone to just get a you know bird's-eye view of the situation that has some appeal but is really the way that the phone's hardware interacts with the software that I love that the capacitive scrolling with the other keyboard that's okay it didn't it isn't as smooth as I would like it to be I had some issues with speed control it doesn't feel you respond the same way a scrolling on the screen does but some tweaking there and it would be it would be perfect I think now have you have you so one of the frustrating things about the way that we're always sort of ahead of the curve whenever we have to play with embargoes is it like the night before all of these reviews were said a while did you get the update did you did you hear I checked I catch yesterday afternoon and it wasn't available then okay there's no I just got it this morning so I checked last night and nothing had come in I just got it this morning and and I think it has helped some of those little multi tasking teething pains but I question you know if you're a company like you know Alcatel not Alcatel TCL and you're working with blackberry on this and you've got this embargo and all of these videos are primed to go live the next day why would you since it's really who's this right because because now it's like it one we already have that conversation like this is up to date on it on the Android operating system it's got the most recent security patch we're looking good for software support I don't have the update it's not even out for me and I'm happy that they're being so proactive about pushing out patches and bug fixes and things like that but if you really did just improve performance you're going to have dozens of videos going live that aren't take advantage of this this performance update which consumers will get when they set up the device once it's available to buy but consumers are going to look at some of these videos and hear some of these criticisms of like well sometimes the performance is a bit stuttery and then I call well I don't want that when it possibly is fixed now but you know yeah I mean this is all very true but I can't help just looking at the situation now wonder if TCL kind of had a feeling that things would play out as they did that people are going to use the device for a while they're going to appreciate the hardware keyboard probably a lot more than they thought they were looking love the battery life and the raw performance isn't going to matter so much and maybe they had a little bit of insight they're like okay yeah we'll have this last minute update that'll tweak the performance but performance isn't going to be too big a selling point of this phone to begin with so might not matter that much it is I think it is definitely telling in this day and age where we're not you know the idea of a big phablet ephone with a huge battery that gets reasonably good run time um that for for all of the visual characteristics of this hardware keyboard that it really does seem to be battery life which is run away with the discussion as to the positives of this phone I really enjoy this keyboard and to your point I think one of the most interesting things about the keyboard is actually in the camera app did you try sliding across the the keyboard after focusing oh no no so I using the bass bar shudders okay yes so I think that's kind of cool especially because you don't have to reach your thumb around the keyboard yeah um but when you focus and then you slide on the keyboard it's this super accurate fine level of exposure compensation so you focus and then you're like oh I want the photo to be just a little bit brighter and you just scooch up on the keyboard just a little bit and you can control the brightness really easily and so that to me was a perfect example of a company that's doing a good job of actually utilizing their hardware as opposed to sort of apologizing for it you know like I look at the Galaxy s8 screen aspect ratio and Samsung hasn't done anything to really maximize the extra real estate you know the camera app is just a sea of wasted space the best solution they've come up with is you can crop into your apps which cuts off controls in the corners we haven't really seen anything use that real estate outside of the browser so for blackberry they've got a problem where organ amelie it's this clumsy reach around the keyboard or hey you know what we can actually just use the keyboard for a bunch of controls and that actually frees up the display for all of this stuff that we would normally have to put extra icons or shutter buttons or sliders or rockers yeah and you know more than that I think it helps overcome a a flaw with gives touchscreen interfaces in general that we've sort of been living with that hasn't been great as it sliders are horrible to work with exact if you ever try to set like the brightness slider on Android phone with any kind of precision it is maddening because you cannot see where the slider is when your finger is on top of it so trying to get like pixel accurate placement you cannot do it so having the control the input separate from the feedback on that input is it feels a fantastic development Oh totally every time I run like a battery test I have to set the screen brightness to a specific yeah you know Mike and most phones can't get there most ones it's like I'm going to move it just a little bit oh man I just threw it 13 it's off I said like 20 minutes last night triangles with the Equality 10 flaw exercise in frustration and how oh man no seriously like the slider on the p10 plus has like this hard split where it's like like we heard about a whinny err no no no % like no one consented to have a said to staff brightness it's so frustrating uhm but I was pleasantly surprised to see I mean you kind of get back to some of the discussion resent about the software here no I completely agree that the hands-off approach largely rolling with a stock interface with a couple little minor additions it's a very Motorola aesthetic yeah cuz realize a design I think that this is really played into the conversation of whiz-bang versus core usage and and I wonder what what do you think that we can get across to consumers that this is a viable option even if it's not the sexiest or do you think the market has already you know sort of bifurcated between the Samsung Apple discussion that some this might be the perfect phone for someone but you know what they feel safer going with and with an iPhone do you think that this has the potential to start chipping away at that duality mindset you know any blackberry phone in a recent history I think this is the one to do that what the night of succeeds is going to depend a lot on how the marketing works yeah and I know that TCL's talked about getting some carriers involved in a Sprint's been mentioned and that's going to be key to to getting this into the hands of users also blackberry has historically been the phone verb you know businessmen and getting the right connections to give large companies who deploy the phones to thousands of employees that I think is even much harder not to crack because I feel like this ship has sailed there they're not going to want to move backwards into you know into the what they were doing in 2008 and there's going to be a lot trickier and I think the price is also well it could be a problem and I'm not if there's one thing I'm not sure about with how those phones release is how people can respond to the pricing I look at it you know I'm looking at the hardware and comparing this to phones like reason example the moto G 5 plus right another 625 based handset that costs so much less than this and is a really really good phone in its own right but you're not buying the BlackBerry key one for the same reasons you would buy the g5 plus I mean yes if the battery that appeals to you you might consider both but these are not going after the same users here and I wonder if the people who the key one might appeal to are gonna be fine shelling out an extra $250 Wow another state allowed to realize that's almost twice as much with the g5 plus is going for but right you get you do get value for that money I don't know if it's enough value though to throw in customers especially when you can get something like Galaxy s8 or an iPhone for just another couple hundred dollars more right but I mean like we've seen psychologically that even that hundred-dollar bump has this profound impact on what people value or what people perceive is value right um so III have to wonder I'm with you there I have to wonder will the bang for buck conversation it's one that you have to exercise nuance like if we're looking against a moto g5 I think the build quality on the blackberry is better I think absolutely cereals is better I think the camera is better the battery life is just a teeny bit better with an agar sure yeah well yeah but I mean like I mean we're talking about like the the efficiency aspect but they're both you I mean yeah Ivan 6.5 but you have bigger battery and smaller screen here so yeah and so when we start you have to start like check marking all of those differences you know it's the same problem I've had with the premium mid rangers last year which is something because something has a Qualcomm 820 doesn't mean that it's a flagship right a phone is not just its processor right but look at the sum of all because not just all the components how they come together what the experience they deliver is but it's tricky because we have with the pricing here the key one is a top-of-the-line mid-range err but then you look at the really really affordable phones with flat chip level Hardware from some of the other Chinese OEMs and which do I go with you have to ask yourself and yet you are ultimately by this I think for the keyboard there's no two ways about it well and and I think that there is so and this this is why I have such a hard time I'm stuttering all over the place because my brains trying to put three different ideas together all the time and that's what's so difficult to express about a phone like the key one is I think the the battery discussion is actually one of the most exciting things about this phone the keyboard is a nice and nostalgic throwback and then I'm also super appreciative of the fact that this company seems to be way ahead of the curve on support and updates in a way that I've been very frustrated with some of the big league players like LG and Samsung you know waiting forever to get security patches and bug fixes to devices that are demonstrably more expensive than this blackberry and so I want to be able to summarize all that but at the same time I also have to acknowledge that there's a $300 phone which is going to perform very similarly you just won't get the support you won't get the uniqueness of the keyboard you won't get the battery life and it's got a slightly nicer camera and music sounds a little bit better out of the headphone jack like that's that's tough you know like I can already see all of my family and friends their eyes sort of glazing over as I try fix playing that stuff when they want let people have thunk about that out yeah oh it really is and and also I worry that maybe also the name blackberry I I'd be curious to hear thoughts on this do you think that that's a name which can recover in terms of consumer mind share or do we think that it's passe like if you were carrying a board meeting where this phone really belongs would people look at that as being old fashioned or would they actually be interested in the fact that that seems to be a new BlackBerry is this person a renegade or is this person really a go-getter sharpshooter getting it done kind of fellow oh yeah there's definitely I think it would be a prejudice against the the BlackBerry brand and that you know much like if we're looking at you know Windows Mobile how Windows Phone never sort of caught on they missed the boat somewhere in the middle there to get into the total another twenty ten but I think that that Blackberry has the advantage that there was never really a bad blackberry like the company didn't crash and burn on some horrible phone it just sort of never really gave us the really good phone we were looking for so without any like very public failure like that I think that it is possible with the right marketing and their big caveat there to to get the public's perception realign to say that you know blackberry we did great things a while back we're still doing great things now with a modern Android twist on it you're acting a battery life like this with any of your other modern flagships and this phone will do everything that they do maybe not in the same way or with as biggest screen but you're not missing out on anything by going with this phone and you're going to get a lot too so again this is going to come down to how they promote this and how they go after today's and in the smartphone users a day or not people are shopping with different concerns in mind and they were when blackberry wasn't a day but if they go after that and yeah I think there definitely is a chance for the phones and the brand to succeed I want to see where this brings a blackberry brand with our next big device is going to be so what you're saying is that they should spend a lot of money on fun playful commercials of people dancing with the phone you're not telling you anything about the product or the services I don't know if I'd go that far but I think I would embrace like what we're saying about this you know being a good phone for social media and just yeah on the go you know the gig economy productivity you might not have a set office but you want some easy way to bang out emails great keyboard for doing that on the go so I think use modernizing the way you reach out to today's customers this isn't the phone that you know is going to be in your suit breast pocket as your in your board meeting with everyone staring down at their laps clicking away on their their BlackBerry's that's not the I mean I'm sure those users are still going to like this phone that's not cool blackboard ECL needs to reach out to now yeah I think that part of the conversation especially with so many bring your own devices policies going in at different corporations that's definitely I think going to be one of the most sensitive aspects of whether or not this phone succeed and so I have to believe that their notion of success isn't necessarily like oh we're going to sell 10 million units in the next month you know like crazy sales numbers but can this can this demonstrate to the public that this company is making a course correction because that becomes an underdog story also alongside you know the the lineage of support the the history of security the reliability of these devices how they last a really long time blackberries are always renowned for their battery life their efficiency um all of those things I think are still in the fog of consciousness from people who are just a little bit like maybe closer to my age maybe we're into mobile electronics you know a little while back but to chip away at what people are really valuing today you know if I teach us with Gordon Levitt drumming in a subway for blackberry I'm pretty sure this fights been lost it's interesting you mentioned the age of users here because you and I we've used phones with hardware keyboards before but I imagine there's a very large percentage of today's smartphone users who have never used a phone with a keyboard this was not sold on their radar when they started using smartphones and I'm curious to see if there's any way to reach out to them and convince them that this is a viable option for text input and I wonder people would get this phone and just use the software keyboard you know lose half their screen real estate which is the right precious commodity to begin with in the project but I do wonder if there's a phone that's only going to appeal to like maybe people in their 30s on up will will teenagers will people 20-somethings go after this device you know I see in it it's such a tricky concept because that's where I get you see that's where I get most sensitive about branding and names you know the company behind this product and and where there's I think always an opportunity to disrupt this market but I wonder if the BlackBerry logo will be synonymous with what my parents used to use as opposed to this could be something you know sort of subverting what traditionally popular in this market I handed the phone over to my wife and she was a die-hard CrackBerry loser back in the day like when when she finally had to kind of give up on the BlackBerry ecosystem that was rough and she was issued an iPhone for her gig through work and she hates it she can't stand it she she's she's sort of an Android user by default but I hand her this phone and she's like you know she really likes the build quality kind of reminds her of her old bulbs used to have a curve too and she's kind of flipping it over and it's got Android so she's familiar with Android and then I handed her the case and it's got a big old to me logo on it and she went oh that's a smart partnership like all of a sudden you know from this like sort of nostalgic throwback the company had done one thing very smart for her in appealing to a fashion lifestyle luggage and bag brand it wasn't that that changed her perception of the phone it changed her perception of the company that they understood that that logo meant something to business travelers to people who have to walk into board meetings are going to be judged the second they walk in the door by the briefcase that they're carrying or the laptop bag that they've got and that all of a sudden blackberry had done something fresh of this time it wasn't just a really nice blackberry case they actually struck out a partnership with a company that's relevant in sort of the business fashion world today and so I just thought that was such a unique moment you know like I'm sitting here trying to do a battery benchmark and she's like oh to me see right this is not something that I've you know looking at this phone from specs from just my from the user experience standpoint I even forgot about the case I came with one I didn't give it a second look it's not something I normally think about when they die waiting phones but clearly there are people for whom this is a important consideration is the ecosystem accessories and and the quality of those and how they add to what you get as a phone that's not something that we always think to look at but you know also talking about the branding and I was surprised I would mention earlier or you were talking about the great audio quality with a headphone jack here the headphones that came with this phone now I didn't find the audio quality of our the headphone quality itself to be super highs I don't think it compares great to like the AKG brand it ones with a Galaxy s8 but that day you had you know different size tips this is not something you always see it tends to be a slightly higher end thing it felt like I'm really a really nice addition to a phone that he was otherwise sort of mid-range II I really liked the prominent blackberry logo on the ends of the earbuds there just shows that like they could have just had just some glossy black generic looking earbuds in here but they're really embracing the little blackberry logo and I think it speaks strongly to the dedication to the brand here this is we want to get the blackberry face back out there let people know we're not going away and that we can do more than just we're not just about typing away I keep going back to like businessman but this is going to be a hard of image of the company that needs a shake in order to modernize their appeal and associating it with media with you know Apple with mobile devices even before the iPhone really took off with you would see the iPod you can see the iPod you saw the white earbuds exactly and you got to know Apple this is media you made the connection here just having the BlackBerry logo out there with the earbuds it's a little thing but I think it goes towards showing where the company's priorities are Oh totally I completely agree and also it's just kind of nice when a phone is sort of properly accessorized to use right out of the box like I don't love I actually I really don't like the earbuds that come with Huawei phones but you get you know earbuds and a snap-on case you have done there yeah and an enemy like that you open the box and like this phone is ready to use go out and live life you know you have to worry about buying a cover case for it and so that was a really happy experience to get from a blackberry as well I'm right there with you and I think it's one of those things where visibility is going to be super important to see people using these things out in public it was one of the first times I was ever recognized in Los Angeles was the first night that I was shooting with the key one camera and someone came up to me to ask me about the phone because they saw I had a blackberry and then they realized who I was hahaha oh it's ridiculous on to run like someone was motivated to walk up to a stranger at 10 p.m. at the San Fernando Valley while someone's pointing a camera like a newsstand on a street corner to ask about a phone that actually motivated in interaction and then you know again just kind of silly like oh wait I've seen you on YouTube you're like do YouTube it's cool um but that like the phone was the star of this interaction with this total stranger and there's there still I think there is still sort of a mindfulness or an awareness there but you're absolutely right it can only be helped and it's one of the things that bothered me a lot about the AKG branding exercise that Samsung just did is that those are Samsung earbuds manned by AKG I had a Samsung Repp properly correct me from my review of their earbuds where I was giving them a positive review but apparently I wasn't giving them the right kind of um that that bothers me because I'm a huge fan of AKG they make some of my all-time favorite studio recording policies not only head you know I mean like we were neutral friends of mr. Mobile mr. Mobile took my microphone recommendation because I thought it would pair nicely with the dulcet tones of his narration that's $1,000 AKG studio mic it's one of my all-time various business studio microphones I mean we really wanted to capture something special in picking his mic and so that label means something to me if you slap that label on a pair of Samsung gear buds and you're not really disclosing the relationship between Harman AKG and Samsung then I feel you're sort of you know you're sort of misrepresenting what you're getting out of the box to pop open a blackberry box and get a really respectable pair of earbuds a really nice little microphone I took a couple phone calls from from those earbuds and the mic seemed to perform really well and they've got the BlackBerry logo in there there's there's no confusion what you're getting here we don't know who the partner is that maybe helped them design those earbuds and it doesn't matter they're blackberry earbuds for the BlackBerry phone that you just bought and they're built to go together and they do that job really well you know not to to change gears here but I while you mentioned mr. mobile does something I saw in his review that I mentioned as well when you versus getting hands-on with this phone we haven't talked about the the convenience key on the side here this little shortcut spot and I left you pull up an app or do some phone thing how do you feel about the placement here because to this day I go to power the phone up or down and I hit the convenience key answer to the power button this button was not where it should be no it's not um so this has been a consistent problem that I've had with TCL and Alcatel is that they put their power button in the wrong way yeah the power button should never be on the upper left hand side of a phone it just that's what will never look for it there um so it's completely wrong I think on other devices like the idol 4 and some of the Detex some of the BlackBerry detects the idea of this convenience key a is a sound one I wish that this worried camera shutter button instead on the key one because we also have a QWERTY keyboard that you can program every single key on it so what convenience do I get from having another yeah on the side of the phone this is one of the few philosophical missteps that I think this phone makes is blackberry and Android together already means a significant amount of feature overlap in how you can customize the device between blackberry services and Google services this this phone can be tailor fit to be precisely exactly what you want it to be down to exacting the new chef so giving us this one extra bit of hardware which is hopefully redundant is just I think unnecessary I think it complicates the phone and I think we're also in an age where a massive consumers kind of want to be told how to use the phone they're not necessarily looking to con yeah that's the prop there's so much you can do with it there's this yeah you're overwhelmed by choice you know the Android authority guys had a great idea they matched a Google Voice Search with a convenience key so it's kind of like a big speed button oh then we repress that in doing a little voice search there that's pretty convenient that's smart but also you know like I can totally see see I want to try that now I actually like what I would I get a better benefit out of that the end I can now also totally see the people in the comments on that video going well why not just use hot word voice detection and use your okay gugugu and have your phone recognize you're already doing a voice search shouldn't it just respond to your voice for a voice search to initiate the voice search and I can already hear the complaining people on something like that cuz there's always someone there's always more people ready to complain about an idea then like experiment with that idea I you know it is one of those things like I know why they put it on there and I understand how it fits into the rest of the TCL aesthetic and that kind of goes double for now blackberry since blackberry hardware is made by TCL but I don't use it it gets in the way and you're absolutely right it confuses my thumb where I have to spend time with other devices where that's exactly where a power button would be yes yes is a number of other phones and I you know it's I just I don't have it set to do anything it's not a thing that I use you know I can see the appeal at least up having this and the the keyboard app shortcuts we're kind of a long press or short press one of the the letters on the keyboard to pull up an app that a whole lot of possibility in there you probably don't have enough apps on your phone to assign everything but how do you remember what does what and you can make some mnemonic devices and you be for your browser that makes sense eventually you're going to run out of those and there's an appeal to having just one button that you know what it does but then again it's up to you to form that Association to choose what you wanted to do and I you know for several days and playing around with what's the best thing to tie this to I wanted to do Twitter or snapchat what what am I gonna get the most value out of and I don't know there's a clear answer to that yeah and this also kinda just goes back to I think your your comments in your review muscle memory is really important and I think it's something that a lot of us maybe don't comment on as often as we should I think so many reviews and user experiences where someone says that this isn't intuitive or this didn't work right are really confusing familiarity with a nominal experience right I'm gonna head back down something else but that's a close oh you have that by exposure not necessarily what this device did yeah right and so when you were when you were talking about in your review you know like using the hardware keyboard is its foreign yeah it is it doesn't feel right you do a lot of none of the skills you've developed either with you know hitting individual keys or especially for use to any sort of gesture typing does not translate over to this and it's odd to not only be you know hitting away on the keys use your thumbs and swiping upwards - yeah for the prediction it's it's it's a whole new thing it's a whole new set of muscle memory you have to pick up but it didn't really take me that long before I felt like I wasn't making a million mistake it's still not on my speed probably isn't like it is with a on-screen keyboard but it doesn't feel far even after just a week or two and I think that's absolutely one of the things that was a take away from me because I didn't have to do the full review so this was just my personal usage and kind of coming to grips with um revisiting this hardware keyboard I especially after the Privy seal so much better put together than the experience I had with my Prive but just that notion of this phone really does give off kind of a poor first impressions if I give this phone to someone like if I give this phone to mine mom um my mom had a texting phone with a sideways QWERTY keyboard and now she's she's on a galaxy and I know for a fact that this wouldn't feel right to her because she's gotten used to getting things done on her galaxy so that first time if I were to only hand this phone to her and like let her play with it for a couple minutes this would feel like garbage he felt like who would want this I don't want this but if I were to take away her galaxy and make her use it for a week I think at the end of this week she would probably look at her galaxy in a completely different way in terms of the things that she really values about having a smartphone you know that's got to be but horrifying for TCL though how do you yeah telephone to people when it's a good phone and you probably will like I mean certain users will like this phone eventually but how do you get them over that hump no I see and that's and that's exactly it is I you know this is a conversation where even our us as reviewers while we can dig in deep while we can really examine while we can share our experiences there's just so much nuance that can't be conveyed on something like this because it's such a limited focus you know it's such a small sphere of individuals who are sharing their experiences with it and the general consumer who might be interested in it has really you know very few resources or very few opportunities to play with it and when they do I think that initial the first impressions are going to be great you guys stick with it exactly and so that to me I think is ultimately one of the biggest concerns I have with this films I think it's one of the most compelling devices of the year I think this is one of the most interesting phones I'll be able to play with to review to counter review I might do sort of a rebuttal video to some of the things that Jaime was talking about um but that's because I get to have a conversation about a company which had a specific idea and market in mind and nailed the execution why I love the b20 I don't think the v20 is a great all-rounder but it's a content creation and multimedia monster you know so like they did they did nail exactly what they set out to do it's just not maybe the widest audience that they could reach and I think blackberry is in the same situation here this isn't going to be sort of the solution you point to as being sort of the soft around the edges friendly to everybody phone but for the person who's interested in a certain quality of productivity this phone absolutely nails it and I think everyone can appreciate better battery life but you know that's tricky because I find when people ask me for advice on what phone to get I come back with well what's most important to you and they'll say something like I want a great camera or you're really pretty screen and see all the battery life is super important I don't think a lot of people go shopping for a phone saying I want something with a really great battery life and if they did I don't know that the key one but necessarily come to mind for me as the phone to suggest I mean I mean on it will not on for me it might but I mean I would like your sylvans iterator II on something more mass-market I would suggest like looking at flagships from like LG or Samsung which among those has the great greatest battery life and you'd have to like come out and say well I want the phone that has a keyboard that those still exist like any funny you mentioned that I do and they're not too shabby you know I think that's really interesting though is is I don't have that story of 60 hours of use I'm not just like it was on for 60 hours but I was using for 60 hours with any other phone that I've reviewed so I was really impressed with the mate 9 you know 5.9 inch screen four thousand milliamp hour battery I think I can eat out two days not two days and two nights but two I'm up and I go to bed two days of use on them I think now this is absolutely with a bullet one of the phones that I can point to the key one what if someone were to say to me like hey you know what like I don't care if I can play games and I don't care if I can watch YouTube videos I need something that can that can last immediately you know I have that that reference point 60 hours of active use that I don't have that number because I just for granted on a galaxy you know like oh it'll still be I'll still have some juice left by the time I go to bed right but I'll have deployment a day is the best you're shooting for here exactly and so now like I have this one talking point um and and I also have the talking point of the keyboard but I think you're right I don't think people go into buying a phone and considering like oh well I want a phone that I know won't leave me stranded but that's absolutely one of the first things they complain about yes yeah after they buy a phone their phone doesn't have good battery equal you know I I don't know if this is something worth complaining about is it an issue for you that there's no wireless charging support here I've heard people say this is not something consumers want this is just a way to sell accessories at the carrier stores but it just would have put the bow on it for me I think and I can imagine this well but they're really really nice like themed blackberry charging pads that have the you know the fake leather on there and the logo stamped in them it would look really cool but III agree that it would be a nice perk of a feature but it's also it's what I consider to be a perk you know like having wireless charging on a galaxy wouldn't have ever been a purchasing Mounier ah what I like that it's there you know but all where I miss it when it's gone we're talking about perks that we miss what about water resistance I know it must have been a nightmare to do with a hardware keyboard but this has become everyone does this and should you maybe be wary that this phone is less durable than is competition well in I think yeah yes um so yes but I also feel like this is this is an opportunity for manufacturers to step up disclosure to have conversations you know they're there their focus on this phone was sort of the rough-and-tumble durability aspect kind of ThinkPad style yeah no one ever just says if this thing isn't waterproof you kind of have to listen long and like wait why is no one mentioning water oh but but I think every phone should have a properly disclosed IP rating so even if it should be like a nutrition label on food yeah and so so that would mean to me now I know what I'm in for as a consumer if you know the pixel is properly rated I p53 I know this thing is not rated to be completely submerged underwater and I feel a company like blackberry should really be at the head of a conversation like that you're telling me impact resistant glass and that it's a durable frame it's it's ruggedly built it's just all good Ronde and to get banged up a little bit but what if I spill my martini work to doodle yeah I just want to know like it can I just kind of you know shake it off and like be okay or is this like I need to get this thing replaced and serviced immediately and that you're you're absolutely on point there like I just need to know what I'm in for and I feel that's a bigger deal than then whether or not it really is truly like go swimming underwater with it kind of a thing I would at least know what it is that I'm in for but Stephen um this has been a phenomenal conversation I'm so glad we had you back to talk about this phone sort of a sum it up for me wrap it up you've spent a week with this device you're feeling pretty good don't know.some I am feeling really great about this phone I am already moved on to my next review but I'm kind of like I'm having some withdrawal here and this doesn't always happen for me where I just want to spend more time with this device and I didn't even come fully around to embrace like I still struggle a little with the hardware keyboard I'm not as fast as I'd like to be but I can finally see all the potential on this device and there are really few phones and I'm glad you have me on to talk about this one because there's just a few devices I've been as excited about as this one and I think that that's what's going to make this this phone shines you get people using this they're going to start forming their own stories about the key one what they used it for and they're going to tell other people and the words gonna get out about this guy it might take a little while because like you said there's people need to unlearn with their expectations from other phones with hardware keyboard mother BlackBerry's Ian and this Steph has its work cut out for it for success but this is easily the most exciting blackberry phone eight years and one of the like you said one of the most exciting phones of 2017 so far right on so ladies and gentlemen boys and girls I would highly recommend checking out the pocket now review of the BlackBerry key 1 and when you're done with that if you have some extra time yeah you should totally check out no seriously I think Steven you did a phenomenal job in covering this phone especially given because you know when we had Evan on last week for the podcast we kind of ran into that same situation everyone's got the same embargo everyone has to kind of push the same talking points through the same loser process over the same period of time but your review I really appreciated the commentary that you brought to it and I thought it was a really fun discussion for you guys to have over at Phone arena so everyone who's watching this or listening to this definitely go check out the phone arena review of the BlackBerry key one with our are awesome Steven shank at the at the helm of this review talking about productivity durability and all the pointers knocked out with this phone that that means so much coming from you thanks for the kind words you're more than welcome I feel like just was like this is the digital hug like you know back mutual back patting because I loved working with you man this was that this this was a fun way to revisit that absolutely again with the CEO you