BlackBerry KEYone - Hands-on Review _ Impressions

Hey Everybody, This is Erica The Technology N Who Likes to Film Stuff

I Got My Hands on the BlackBerry Key1 and Want to Give My Early Thoughts

This is a device that is laced with nostalgia. It reminds me of my Palm and Pocket PC days when Blackberry was king. Those Blackberry phones could last for days, and this seems like it will be no different. It's got a huge 355 mAh battery and a carefully chosen Snapdragon 625 processor to take advantage of the best battery life to performance ratio possible. I think it was an awesome choice as I sense that it was very responsive.

But I'm not entirely a speck head, and TCL is trying to recreate the Blackberry of old that people really loved but with some modernized features. Like, for example, a fingerprint sensor embedded into the space bar capacitive keyboard for scrolling, where the Blackberry of old had a scroll ball or jog wheel. It's also an Android device, so consumers can have access to the broadest amount of apps possible. Happily, this comes with Android Nougat, Android's latest operating system, and will receive monthly security updates.

Now, I really think that they got the design right with this one. It feels great in the hand, no bending or flexing. It is very solidly built, also well weighted not top heavy for being a tall device like the Priv when the keyboard is open. Its bit of heft makes it feel like a premium device to me, and its rubberized back makes it quite grippy. So I wouldn't be afraid to use this without a case. It feels like a phone that I can use for long periods of time without fatigue, also not a huge device thankfully so even with my small hands I can use it pretty comfortably.

The width feels perfectly comfortable to me. This is insanely exciting because many phones these days are just too big for me here it is next to the G6 and the regular sized Google pixel. Not bad you can see that they are pretty similar in size now taking a look around the device the display is a 4.5-inch display akin to 1080P, awesomely for those who want accurate color they have included an sRGB color mode under developer options at the top.

We have a headphone jack and a microphone on the front, we have an 8-megapixel camera receiver LED notification light and ambient light sensor SL proximity sensor on the bottom right. We have a single speaker and a microphone on the left, and it has a USB-C charging port that supports Quick Charge 3.0 so this thing is never going to be dead. On the right, we have the SIM micro SD card slot, volume rocker, and convenience key. I wonder why they didn't just switch the power button and that convenience key on the back. Is there a 12-megapixel camera, it's a Sony IMX 378 sensor with dual tone LED flash and an f/2.0 aperture, all just like the Google pixel.

But is making good images than just the image sensor such as the ISP and algorithms used within to process the image and the lens so we shall see if the Key1 is able to compete with those that use Advanced HDR+ algorithm to process the image since it does not have OIS but this might be okay. I'm really hoping that the enhanced stabilization toggle that only works for full HD and HD at 30 frames per second isn't the only software stabilization that would make 4K video entirely useless next.

I love that keyboard, it has just enough key press feedback. Personally, I like it more than the Priv or Passport because the device is narrow and the keys are not hard to press as if they require plenty of breaking in. It took me a while to work in the keys on the Passport and they got easier to press over time but my fingers would get irritated after a while of typing this is not happening here, they feel plush comfy ready to use, not overly clicky or needing too much pressure but not mushy either I had an instant smile on my face. You will have to go and try out the keyboard for yourself to decide.

Furthermore, having those shortcut keys and Blackberry security features is certainly really nice. The one quirk I notice when using this device is that when scrolling it is easy to hit the on-screen buttons guess I'll have to adjust to this over time but it didn't happen that often anyway so I will have a review unit in just a few weeks, and I have to say that I am super excited.