MWC 2022: Hands On with BlackBerry KeyOne

Don't call it the Mercury. The new keyboarded, Android-powered BlackBerry is the KeyOne, and information technology'southward launching in Apr for United states of america$549.

It's the well-nigh premium BlackBerry device to-date. More than in-depth details here.

MWC Bug Art Made by TCL, the parent of Alcatel, the KEYone has a four.5in screen and the total BlackBerry keyboard you remember; it will exist compatible with all major U.s. and Canadian carriers.

We had an early hands on with the BlackBerry KEYone final month at CES, just Mobile Earth Congress is its official coming out party, and we got to spend more fourth dimension with the hardware and software.

First, we accept full specs now. The BlackBerry KEYone measures 5.87 past ii.85- by 0.37in, and has a 4.5in, 1,620-by-1,080 LCD screen in a iii:two aspect ratio. The main camera is 12 megapixels and the front photographic camera is 8MP. There's 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, plus a MicroSD card slot. At that place's a huge 3505mAh battery, and information technology all runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor.

Wait, that detail Qualcomm mobile processor? That doesn't sound similar a flagship smartphone. But the reason for the this is battery life, said TCL Communication North America President, Steve Cistulli. It is a very power-efficient processor, and the combination of the processor and battery will let the phone terminal more than a full twenty-four hours of use, he said.

"Nosotros believe it's properly designed with the correct engine and the right gas tank," Cistulli added.

In Canada and the Usa, in that location will be two models: one that supports CDMA for Dart and Verizon too as AT&T and T-Mobile's networks, and one that's AT&T and T-Mobile-only. Cistulli said the unlocked model of the telephone will work on all four Usa carriers. For Canada, information technology looks similar this is a Large Three telephone, as it lacks Freedom Mobile's new Ring 66.

The phone will launch showtime on the unlocked market in the Us during the second quarter of this year, with Canadian carriers following and U.s. carriers later that, Cistulli said.

Hands On With the BlackBerry KEYone

I got to spend some more time here with this new BlackBerry flagship and its more CrackBerry-like features than I did at CES. The biggest, most exciting one? Keyboard shortcuts.

Starting time of all, the keyboard is capacitive, which is a lot of fun. You can swipe on it to move between dwelling screens, and use the space bar as a fingerprint sensor. Merely you can also assign any key equally an arbitrary keyboard shortcut: G for Gmail, for example, or M for music.

I as well really like the Hub, BlackBerry's unified messaging app, which at present includes Slack and WhatsApp. Information technology really helps you triage all your messages in i place. And the keyboard feels comfy and familiar. The real question there is whether the long years since there was terminal a successful phone with a full keyboard means people have simply grown out of them. I used to hate typing on touch screens, simply I've become inured.

The phone isn't too wide, although I'd adopt it be even narrower. I can type on the keyboard one-handed, although I take to shift it around in my hand a bit. The capacitive keyboard really helps with ane-handed apply, though. I didn't exam phone call quality, but the lesser-ported speakers were loud plenty for an role conference phone call.

I took some photos, and I'm not sold on BlackBerry'southward low-light functioning. With the principal photographic camera, the white rest tended towards yellow. Low-lite selfies looked dim or blown out, and depression-lite primary photographic camera photos were a bit soft. That said, BlackBerry told me its camera hadn't been fully optimized yet.

What Does BlackBerry Mean Now?

Okay, so now things go confusing.

BlackBerry is now a hardware make of TCL, as well equally two other partners that don't sell phones in the Usa. But it's also an independent visitor, BlackBerry, which makes software and participates in the blueprint of TCL's BlackBerry handsets.

"[Partners] will exist responsible for bringing out BlackBerry-branded handsets going forward," explained Alex Thurber, BlackBerry's senior vice president of global device sales. "We are responsible for developing, maintaining, and supporting the OS with security patches, and so at the end of the day the customer gets exactly the experience they expect when belongings a BlackBerry."

The hardware partners become admission to BlackBerry's industrial pattern team to help create a unified BlackBerry blueprint, but Thurber was coy when I asked if they get admission to BlackBerry's patented hardware technologies, like its special Paratek antennas.

"We license our IP engineering science to many different companies, and yous could assume those companies could be part of that licensing structure," he said.

BlackBerry's Android skin is evolving to provide the kind of control over security and privacy that users expected, but didn't go from the company's earlier Priv phone. BlackBerry'southward starting time Android telephone in the Usa, the Priv had an app chosen DTEK, which monitored a phone'due south permissions, but it initially didn't fifty-fifty offer the level of privacy control that was in Android Marshmallow past default.

"It's now much more than that. Information technology lets y'all tweak permissions subsequently the fact, and information technology lets you set triggers on various elements of a device that might be of concern. I can lock my phone down and ensure that zip is being shared, or just a few piffling elements are bachelor for sharing," Thurber said.

The visitor's under-the-hood security work will also get through total United states of america government certification processes to be usable past the Section of Defense force, he said.

And while Android is BlackBerry's program going forward for now, I got a surprising response when I asked Thurber virtually BlackBerry ten, the visitor'southward last proprietary Os, which is non available on whatsoever electric current devices in the US. "We are certainly not announcing the terminate of BlackBerry 10 devices ... I've learned in the tech earth never to say never," he said.