BlackBerry keyONE Review

Once you take a close look at the keyONE,you know that a BlackBerry never strays far from its route. From the soft backing material to the chamfered edges and aluminum frame,the adage "the apple never falls far from the tree" comes into play. It looks like the BlackBerry classic, only that this one has an 8MP selfie shooter,runs Android Nougat and yes,has a fingerprint sensor located in the space bar and has pulsating LEDs to tell you when you can use the sensor

Like WTF??

BlackBerry (or is it RIM?) has finally decided that the DTEK engine is not enough security for your phone and although that thing was secure AF,it really needed a fingerprint sensor to seal the deal. This is still a BlackBerry in every way,but with some Android on the side. Well,a lot of Android on the side. Let's go into the full review now.


DESIGN
This is still a BlackBerry in every way,and this includes its design. You have the logo on the back;

and the physical keyboard up front. The volume and power buttons live on the right side

Front camera is quite large,just like the Nextbit Robin,and the rear camera is top left positioned and quite large(it even bulges a bit) and this probably means great photos,but we'll get to that in a few. USB C port us at the bottom,the speakers also. Headphone jack lives up top,with a mic and the activity button(which is essentially a button which you can assign to launch certain apps when pressed,and can easily be mistaken for the power button) is on the left. Great design,classic BlackBerry.

DISPLAY

I think the picture above speaks volumes. For one,you can clearly see the black bars on each side of the display. This is because of the weird 3:2 aspect ratio,instead of the more conventional 16:9 ratio. The result is the black bar found on either side of the screen,and this is common to phones with weird aspect ratios,like the Galaxy S8 and Xiaomi MiMix. But despite this,the display is bright and saturated with deep contrast. It's only 1080p,so it can't compare with it's QHD brethren,but it gets its job done. The brightest setting was just below what I usually use under direct Nigerian sun,and the dimmest setting totally blinded me at night. They really need to work on this.

All in all,it's a great display,but needs a little work to perfect it. The display also isn't reflective and this is a big plus in my book.

CAMERA

The camera is a 16MP unit with f/1.8 arpeture,OIS,and a dual LED dual tone flash.

Zoom in,and you see softness and grain in the pictures. But this doesn't mean it takes bad photos,far from that.

KEYBOARD

This is actually one of the selling points of a BB device. The keyboard. It's physical,but here are some of the features to save time:

-scroll on any side of the keyboard to scroll through twitter and Instagram feeds and keep your hands off the screen

-swipe on it like a virtual keyboard to type

-swipe left to right to delete words already typed

That's all.

BATTERY

It's a 3050mAh unit,and 4 hours of SOT was a standard,with about 31% left. This is after really heavy use.

CONCLUSION

Since the audio is quite good,no need. Believe me,if you have 350000 naira lying around(in your purse,handbag or mid section of your bible) rush and buy this phone now. It retails at the above named price on Jumia.ng. And hey,thanks for stopping by.