BlackBerry KEYone review: One for the fans

Welcome back?

Think "BlackBerry", and the next word to follow might well be "keyboard". That this Canadian company once built such a loyal following around one singular hardware feature was impressive enough, but what was even more so was that their smartphones became not just another tech trend, but an entire way of life. Whichever camp you found yourself in at the time, we believe you'll agree that BlackBerry has its name firmly etched in the history books, and not those of tech, mind you - the history books, period.

In the world of tech, the days are long, but the years are short. A gradual shift to touch and apps caught the company almost by surprise. However, BlackBerry, unlike Nokia, managed to stay in the game by converting to Android. The Priv was the first BlackBerry to try to make peace with all camps, packing a lightly customized version of Android 5.1 Lollipop and a slide-out keyboard under a 5.4-inch Quad HD AMOLED display. Today, we have the KEYone, whose name is a clear reference both to the future and the history of the company. The KEYone is now the one BlackBerry needs, but is it the one the people deserve?

Design and Display

The KEYone is the first Android-based BlackBerry to adopt the so-called "monoblock" design: a physical keyboard below a portrait-orientated display.

The build, as one would expect of a true BlackBerry, is top-notch. An aluminum unibody with rounded edges melds nicely into a soft-touch rubber back cover, elegantly dimpled but with a slightly raised camera lens ring and somewhat jarring fluorescent orange and yellow LEDs for the two-tone flash. At least on the Black Edition that we were offered for review, it all comes together almost perfectly, with barely visible antenna lines.

The sleekness of the KEYone's rounded form proved to be the first ergonomic bugbear that really hit home for us, for despite the soft-touch backing, it proved almost as difficult to keep in our hands as Gollum's precious One Ring - a problem seemingly exacerbated by the weight distribution, which appears to be somewhat toward the top of the phone. More than several times, it slipped out of my hands and onto the carpet (thankfully), making me wish that some of that coating had made its way on to the sides of the phone as well.

The power key on the left side, as well as the volume keys and a customizable "convenience key" on the right, have chamfered edges, and do not feel loose or click when touched. However, the placement of the power key directly across from the convenience key made for a host of irritating mis-operations.

On the bottom are a USB Type-C port and a set of speaker holes, only the right one of which actually contains a speaker - though it is perfectly serviceable for music, with reasonably deep bass (considering it's a phone) and little discernible distortion at peak volume.

Then we come to a second issue: the use of a display with a 3:2 display aspect ratio. While this is a necessary evil to keep the form factor to a manageable length, and the 4.5-inch IPS LCD panel is excellent in all kinds of lighting, with bang-on colors and contrast, it results in a less-than-optimal experience when it comes to media consumption, as you'll see black bars around the edges of YouTube videos and some photos:-

And with more ergonomic bones to pick, let's pick apart that killer BlackBerry feature...

Keyboard

It goes without saying that a keyboard on a BlackBerry has a lot to live up to. It must not just be a good keyboard - it has to be great, possibly even perfect. That's why, alas, we have mixed feelings about the keyboard on the KEYone.

The good is that the keys look and feel great enough. They're arranged in three rows, with each key made of hard-wearing polycarbonate, rather than some sort of rubber. Dab-smack in the center of the spacebar is a fingerprint sensor that's accurate, though not quite as fast as that on, say, a OnePlus 5. Each key is evenly backlit, and they're very well laid-out (with the exception of the Alt key where we'd expect the Shift key to be.) Additionally, the keyboard itself is touch-sensitive and works as a trackpad in apps, allowing you to scroll both horizontally and vertically. Three-choice word suggestions are also provided on-screen, just above the keys, and you can select a suggestion by swiping upward on the keyboard. You can even set up to 52 customizable shortcuts to open apps.

And now for somewhat more grave news, before which we must qualify this reviewer's large hands and fat fingers: To start with, the key rows are too short vertically, resulting in a good workout for the thumbs, helped (or not) by the keys also being inadequately indented, as well as requiring a bit more force to depress than expected. The problem is, for folks raised on a diet of software keyboards, all of this adds up to a certain psychological effect - the same reviewer soon found that typing seemed extraordinarily tiring, and then he realized why: he was now typing at half the speed he would have been on a software keyboard.

Another bugbear has to do with the Android navigation keys, which are located just above the keyboard, and too close to it for comfort. We think that BlackBerry is aware of this, for the sweet spots of these keys appear to have been made extremely small (which resulted in multiple taps being needed from time to time) - yet too many times we still found ourselves returning to the home screen or opening the recent apps panel while typing.

On-screen keys would have been the way to go, but this would surely have been an even more unpopular move, given the already scarce screen real estate.

As our enthusiasm for what we hoped would have been the KEYone's most outstanding feature leaked away by the hour, we were itching to just enable the in-built software keyboard to get that drunk text or message to Mama over with - which, by the second day of testing, we shamefully admitted to doing.

Doubtless the KEYone's keyboard is extremely precise, and in the right hands - or the hands of BlackBerry aficionados - it may well be a treat to use. But consider yourself forewarned: try the phone out at a store before committing.

Software

Like the Priv and DTEK Androids before it, the KEYone runs a very lightly-skinned build of Android. Haters of bloatware, rejoice!

That's the good news; the bad is that it's a previous version: Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Given Android's fragmentation problem, this should be no surprise, but those of you miffed because it came at such a price point can take heart: the KEYone is said to be in line for an upgrade to Android 8.0 Oreo.

There are a couple of BlackBerry apps installed in the system, but as bloatware goes, the KEYone continues in a refreshing tradition of providing only apps like BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) that it considers core to the BlackBerry experience. One of these is the BlackBerry Hub. Swiping a thin tab from a designated side of the screen brings up a window with tabs for events, messages, tasks and calendar entries. The Hub looks clean and neat, and entries are presented in an easy-to-read format, with well-sized fonts. One disadvantage of the Hub, unlike widgets on the desktop, is that you can't view all of your calendar entries for the month at once for cross-reference - which is something that is frequently required in a business environment.

While the Hub is a good idea for businesspeople, we can't help thinking that smartphone notifications, in general, have evolved to such a high degree of convenience that the additional drain on battery and RAM resources might well outweigh the Hub's advantages for most.

Apart from a few other BlackBerry apps of no particular interest, such as Help and Content Transfer, you get BlackBerry's DTEK security app, which detects when your device's security has been (or is being) compromised. The other one worth a quick mention is BlackBerry's new Notable app for note-taking.

You can doodle with your finger, and you can do that either on a blank canvas or on screenshots (Notable can be set to launch whenever a screenshot is taken), but you can't save notes in any other compatible file format, such as PDF. Lots of note-taking apps exist, and not a few with pen or finger input, so Notable simply does what image editing does in the Gallery or Album apps of some other Android phones. 

In day-to-day use, between a bit of jerky scrolling and perceptible touch lag or delay here and there, the KEYone's user experience was just a little unsatisfying. It was not nasty, but it felt a little too much at odds with its premium build and business-device feel. Somehow, we think a Snapdragon 821 or 835 processor would have been a more appropriate fit for this device. And this brings us to the benchmarks...

Benchmark Performance

The BlackBerry KEYone packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor mated to 4GB of RAM, a combination that might initially appear unsuited to a device of this price, since it also featured in phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, which cost a good deal less:

SunSpider JavaScript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the web browsing performance of a device through a JavaScript processing test. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience.

The KEYone proved a little slow at SunSpider, but there did not seem to be any hiccups in actual browsing performance. Pages opened in a reasonably zippy manner and slowdowns while scrolling were as expected for this class of device.

Quadrant

Quadrant evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O, and 3D graphics performance.

The KEYone lagged the pack slightly at Quadrant, which suggests some optimization work is needed on BlackBerry's part.

3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited

3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark mixes a graphics and a physics test, the first of which measures the GPU’s ability to process lots of vertices, while the second does the same thing with lots of pixels and post-processing effects. Finally, the physics test evaluates the CPU's ability to process physics simulations without taxing the GPU. 

Again, among other Snapdragon 625 devices, the KEYone held its own.

Certainly, the BlackBerry KEYone turned in a reassuring result for day-to-day use, whether it was switching between apps, starting up the camera, or scrolling through web pages. However, there were times we did feel a Snapdragon 821 or 835 would have added more glitz to a business-oriented device like the KEYone. As you can see from the comparison, we've mostly compared the KEYone to older mid-range devices and not not newer ones from the same price range. Had we done that, the KEYone would pale even further.

Imaging

On the surface of it, the BlackBerry KEYone's camera credentials are given quite a boost by a 12-megapixel Sony IMX378 sensor, the same as that in the Google Pixel. This is a step down from the 18-megapixel unit found in the Priv, but the loss in resolution is countered by larger 1.55-μm pixels. As with the Pixel, the KEYone's camera lacks optical image stabilization.

We have proven time and again that a great sensor does not necessarily take a good picture. While the images are not execrable, color reproduction, sharpness and dynamic range, not to mention overall tone handling, do not impress either, and are nowhere near what the Pixel can produce.

If we had to send the KEYone back with homework, it would be in both color reproduction and noise levels in low light: quite a few shots look lifeless, and in many lighting conditions there is a bit too much noise in images.

On the other hand, the full complement of manual controls provided is commendable. Switching to Pro mode from the camera settings gives you tweakable autofocus, shutter speed (which sadly only goes down to 1/2 second), ISO, white balance (in Kelvin), and of course exposure compensation.

When it comes to image resolution, the 3:2 aspect ratio rears its loathsome head again, for as the sensor is a 4:3 aspect, shots have to be cropped to fit the display - meaning that image resolution is no longer 12 megapixels. You can still choose to shoot in 4:3 - if you're prepared to say hello to those familiar black bars above and below the 'viewfinder'. Choices, choices...

Video recording on the KEYone goes up to 4K at 30fps, and there's electronic image stabilization as well. The video quality, especially in 4K, is above average, but the stabilization generates a fair bit of "jell-o" effect.

Battery

As you know, our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

Before we go into the test results, there's a nifty feature BlackBerry has come up with for the KEYone called Boost Mode. When plugged in, tapping this option turns off syncing, reduces system performance, and disables animations - sort of like a battery saver mode.

This should in theory help most of the input juice to go towards charging, rather than being spent on loading your email, Telegrams, Tinder notifications, RSS articles, and the like. However, we didn't seem to notice much of a real-world effect.

And now, the test results...

This is where, once again, we must raise a questioning eyebrow at the KEYone. Despite being equipped with such a large 3,505mAh battery, and with a screen with arguably fewer pixels to drive than its peers, this phone trails competing Snapdragon 625 devices in battery life, and some of them quite severely at that - as you can see, the Moto Z Play was able to break the 18-hour mark.

It must be said that in day-to-day use, the KEYone's battery could get us through a workday and then some; but then again that was also true of the other devices it was compared against, with some of them easily stretching into the 2-day region. We think that the software on the KEYone really needs a bit of tweaking for overall performance and power efficiency.

Conclusion

You'd expect us to end this review by saying something like "The BlackBerry KEYone is a make-or-break device for BlackBerry." Yes, we know that the number of BlackBerry users continues to fall yearly, and yet we don't think believe a physical-keyboard device like the KEYone is necessary to save BlackBerry, because its licensing collaboration with Chinese giant TCL has proven that the company has access to the resources needed to build a top-shelf flagship smartphone in this day and age - if it wants to.

In that case, we have an even bigger question: who is the KEYone for? This is not about Blackberry vs. iOS or Android, for the KEYone is a modern Android phone with a touchscreen and a keyboard, capable of doing most things in a competent, if unspectacular, manner. Rather, the elephant in the room is that the KEYone is not capable of convincing existing adapted Apple and Android users that its monoblock concept is worth switching for. With videos and photos being at the core of messaging and social media today, many folks are used to 16:9 and now 18:9 displays, and the keyboard and general concept of the KEYone do not compensate for the sacrifices that have to be made for its small and awkward display. There's just not enough to close the gap.

Perhaps a wild card the BlackBerry KEYone could play might be price: make it a couple hundred bucks more affordable and you have an excellent secondary phone for the sales executive, the serial texter, or the stubborn nostalgic. But at S$858, those rushing in may be wise to sit down and work out if they are indeed dyed-in-the-wool BlackBerry fans, for this one's indeed for the fans.

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