In front of me here is the BlackBerry KEY2 box. You’ve already seen the unboxing and first look of the black model that Beau did a few days ago. But this one is the silver model and I wanted to give you guys my first take of the brand new BlackBerry KEY2. If you remember a little over a year ago at CES 2017, that was the first time we got introduced to the BlackBerry KEY1. Back then, it was codenamed Mercury and it was released a little later in 2017. I did a video on that device because it was a very intriguing device for sure. It was really cool to see BlackBerry coming back into the space with the power of TCL and Android and then bringing back some really awesome hardware.
This is the follow up to the KEY1. It’s the KEY2. Hardware-wise, it’s beautiful. It’s really well-built. It has that beautiful metallic sides, very straight edge as well. I just really like the build of this phone. The keyboard, they say, is supposed to resemble the BlackBerry Bold 9900. I never owned the 9900 but I heard a lot of good and raving reviews about that keyboard. So far, it’s taken me a long time to get used to it. It’s taken me a couple of hours just to get used to it so hopefully over the next few days, I’ll get more used to the actual QWERTY keyboard. But I will say it is really tactile and it feels very clicky so that’s definitely a positive thing. The only thing that I don’t like so far is just having to go to Alt key to get to the number pad. It’s just a little strange.
The other things about this device is the dual camera on the back. You have two 12-megapixel shooters-- a wide-angle and a telephoto kind of similar to the iPhone or basically almost all dual camera setups. They’re not in-depth sensors, it’s not a smaller megapixel or monochrome sensor like some other manufacturers. They’re just literally two RGB cameras that shoot in different focal lens.
You also still have that same convenience key on the right side. The power key is in the middle and volume rockers are up top. No switches on the left. USB Type-C for charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top. Thank you to BlackBerry for keeping that in stock.
Software-wise, we’re running Android 8.1 Oreo; which is really cool. It does have BlackBerry’s custom skin on it, which is really built all around security and stuff. You still have that beautiful 4.5-inch display, it’s really nice. And you can also still use the keyboard as the trackpad and scroll through pages and websites and your menus.
So I just wanted to give you guys a brief overview of the KEY2 in the silver color. If you guys want to see more information, make sure to go check out Beau’s unboxing. But just a general spec rundown, you got the Snapdragon 660, 6GB of RAM, and this particular model has 64GB of built-in flash storage. Starting price is $649, which is pretty steep. It’s $100 more expensive than the KEY1 was introduced last year in 2017.
Make sure to leave me a comment below what you want to see of the KEY2. If you guys want to see photo comparisons, any kind of battery life comparisons (it has a 3500mAh battery so it should be pretty good in terms of battery life). But make sure to leave me comments and thoughts what you want to see in future videos on the KEY2: what you want to see it compared to. If you want to see it compared to an iPhone or Android phone of similar pricing, make sure to leave me a comment below.
The BlackBerry KEY2 will launch in the U.S. on July 13th.
