BlackBerry KEYone Review: Typing Purist’s Phone
12 min read
BlackBerry KEYone
RM 2688
Pros
- Excellent build quality
- Accurate & fast fingerprint scanner on spacebar
- Great 4.5-inch 1080p IPS display
- Excellent rear camera
- Great performance
- Excellent battery life
- Tactile & touch capacitive physical keyboard
Cons
- No IP-rated dust and water resistant
- Weak in entertainment (odd screen ratio, single speaker)
- Only included Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 adapter
- High price for mid-range spec
Audio & Display
Mono Speaker
While the bottom firing single speaker setup is nothing to impress about, what it does really well is in the volume department. Yes, it gets really loud and clear when you crank up the volume. Perfect for speakerphone calls and voice messages in instant messaging apps.
If you’re not in the situation of using the earpiece or the speakers, the included earphones with the mic should do the trick for that need for those need-for-hands-free moments.
Shorter Display?
The new trend in the smartphone display is the introduction of the new longer 18:9 display ratio, such as the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+ and LG G6. Just when everyone is still in the middle of the argument whether the new aspect ratio is actually useful, BlackBerry yet again dropped the bomb and release the KEYone with a shorter display.
In order to accommodate the physical keyboard, the display ratio has to be shortened to 14:9. In terms of resolution, the KEYone is technically having a 1080p FHD display. Just that the long edge has 1620 pixels instead of 1920 pixels.
BlackBerry has opted for the capacitive navigation buttons instead of on-screen navigation buttons. Even though it blends well into the display but I still believe that BlackBerry just loses out the potential of having another 50 pixels of extra display real estate.
While I’d prefer that BlackBerry goes for an OLED display as their notification function comes with ambient display feature, otherwise, I have no issue with the IPS panel on it. In terms of display quality, the display has great colour reproduction and wide viewing angle.
The reduced display real estate is indeed having a certain degree of impact on your usage. Certain apps will simply shorten and reduce the displayed content, for example, you see fewer items on the Facebook and Twitter because they are scroll based. Even though some games would scale according to the odd display ratio without any issue but what being affected the most is the video viewing experience especially with the movies with 21:9 aspect ratio.
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