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
Performance & Battery Life
Real life performance
My experience of using the BlackBerry KEYone is very positive, especially on the real life multitasking that involves switching apps between web browsers, social media apps and games. The possibilities why TCL Communication has opted for a Snapdragon 625 instead of Snapdragon 821 or 835 could be due to the need of reducing the cost.
On paper, despite the KEYone is losing out when it faces the other flagship smartphones in the market, but the actual real life performance will not disappoint. We have reviewed a lot of mid-range phones that comes with Snapdragon 625 system on a chip, and I have to say that the performance of these phones is getting a lot better.
Battery Life
Speaking of the Snapdragon 625, as its fabrication process is based on 14nm FinFET semiconductor process, the battery life on the KEYone is amazing without sacrificing the performance. Furthermore, pairing a large 3505 mAh battery with a small 4.5-inch display, this phone is an absolute workhorse.
After using the KEYone as my daily driver for more than 2 weeks, on average I could easily achieve 6 hours of screen on time out of more than 15 hours of usage.
Charging
When you’re running low on power, topping up the 3505 mAh battery from 10% to 90% requires around 90 minutes with the included Quick Charge 2.0 charging adapter. While the phone supports Quick Charge 3.0, I still trying to understand why BlackBerry would include a QC2 adapter instead of QC3.
In case you wondering, QC3 is roughly 10%~15% faster than QC2.
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