One other phone I want to highlight out of MWC in Barcelona: a new BlackBerry Android phone! With a proper hardware keyboard! The BlackBerry Priv from 2015 suffered from some performance issues, so I hope they get it right this time.
Now that the BlackBerry KEYone is official, that means the full run down of specs are available now as well. For the KEYone, every component of the device, including the Snapdragon 625 was specifically chosen with the goal of lengthening the battery life in mind. Mind you, the battery itself is the largest ever put in a BlackBerry, (3505 mAh) so we’re already off to a great start.
It looks nice, too. Very intrigued by this phone.
It looks pretty impressive except for that weird bit of shiny plastic below the spacebar. Looks like a big U-shaped key. I feel like it should not stick out as much as the keys.
Edited 2017-02-27 05:47 UTC
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/blackberry-keyone-hands-on-b…
Yeah, screw Ars Technica’s MWC reviews. On one hand, they praise Nokia for being the only company other than Google dedicated to stock Android with monthly security updates, ignoring the fact that BlackBerry already has a track record of a year and a half doing the same thing, even beating the Nexus line with updates on occasion. Then they praise Motorola for their new dime a dozen slab with the phrase “sign me up,” as if Motorola didn’t burn all of their users after the Lenovo transition by breaking their promise of software updates. The first comment of that article is a user with a Moto flagship stuck with a Spring 2016 software revision!
But when BlackBerry releases a throwback relic, the *only* physical keyboard on the market and the first new physical keyboard since 2014, we get, “If this is how BlackBerry wants to do hardware, we really won’t miss them.” Really? The monopolized keyboard, probably worth the price of admission itself isn’t the only differentiating factor here: you are also paying for guaranteed security updates each and every month, on top of a mostly stock but somewhat hardened Android experience. That itself is worth an extra hundred bucks spread over the two year life expectancy of a smartphone.
This is BlackBerry’s Nokia 515, which was a final tribute to the diehard feature phone fans back in 2013 when it looked like Nokia was gone for good. Phone renders of this device go back three years. It is not meant to set precedent, or be the first in a new line of phones, but rather to sunset the era of physical keyboards on mobile devices. If you want real value, there’s DTEK60 with flagship specs at OnePlus prices except with guaranteed security updates.
The last hardware keyboard + the security updates + the nostalgia is the value add here. BlackBerry/TCL doesn’t care about sales with this device. You can’t even pre-order yet. This will be a low-volume (maybe a few hundred thousand, tops) soft landing for the final BB10 users to move to Android.
In fairness, the complaints were almost exclusively about the price – $525 for a phone with hardware specs equal to phones in the $200 range.
The extra $225 is an awful a lot for just a keyboard.
but when an iphone or samsung cost $800-$900 is this not the new midrange?
The reason phones cost $200 is their dreadful lack of support. I bought a Xiaomi MI5, the hardware was fine but the software was a botch job of broken promises.
If I were to kit out my company with new phones, you know what I am willing to pay for the support blackberry offer rather than OnePlus or similar.
I bought an HTC One m9 for $100 in 2015 (plus whatever 2-year nonsense Telus was putting in the contract; it’s for work, I don’t care) and it’s still getting OS updates somehow… currently on 7.0.
Finding decent Android hardware is similar to finding decent non-Apple laptops… there seem to be 100,000 crappy models for every decent one.
Edited 2017-02-28 15:04 UTC
You do know the difference between the actual price versus the subsidized price you’re quoting, yes?
Indeed I do, but the HTC One m9 didn’t list for iPhone prices. BB needs to rethink their pricing, and that’s been the case for 3-4 years now.
It’s different enough from the slabs of copycat glass phones out there and it brings more of the BB10 features I used on the Passport.
I had the Priv, but it went back after a week since I couldn’t get accustomed to the narrow and cramped buttons on the keyboard.
As Far As It can Go. Is not Harvest or Not harvest. But Who Gets To harvest You.
..hahahahaha…how about no.
The problem with the Priv has and always will be android! thats the performance issue, I thought performance issues were the result of rooting and modding. Then I got a phone that I couldn’t root, now I see why you have to root. You have to fix android! When I got my priv it worked great, then when the updates started rolling in, the phone got slower with every update. I have never done a factory reset, no thank you. Since Google seems to think its cool to delete my internal storage, and without a usable recovery and backup. IOS is worthless and slow. Android is just crap. How can 2 different premium android phones have the same exact issues, yet they dont get fixed? Its been almost two years since android would randomly just play only the left channel when connected through headphone jack. This is stupid, its fine for open source software. I dont mind in linux or on a rooted phone. But production devices are having this issue, and its been there since 5.0 and its still there. fix, kill the app. Whether its spotify, vlc, musicfolder, or even chrome. But wait….. you cant just kill apps the way you used to anymore. Now you have to go into settings and actually find the app to force close. What a pile of sh!t android has become. So lets blame blackberry, lets blame samsung, lg, qualcom, the user, designer, but not android. My 8 year old windows pc boots faster than any android device…..yes thats a bad thing