Revealed at Mobile World Congress in February, the BlackBerry KEYone has today gone on sale in London, at the exclusive department store Selfridges, with wider distribution in the UK, Europe and the US to follow.
It’s a slick, aluminum-framed handset with a
4.5in HD screen, fingerprint sensor buried in the physical keyboard’s space bar
and the biggest battery yet in a BlackBerry. But will it be enough to put the
company back in play?
Like Nokia with its new-old 3310 handset,
BlackBerry is a brand which scores big in terms of cosy nostalgia. Many of us
remember our first BlackBerry handset with its basic display, below-average web
surfing and odd shape. Its
phenomenally speedy push-email delivery and superbly
usable physical QWERTY made up for all its shortcomings and more.
But the world of mobile changed and
BlackBerry didn’t keep up. So business customers who loved the brilliant
security but not the phone’s design, persuaded their IT directors to let them
have a cool-looking iPhone.
Teenagers who loved the free BlackBerry
Messenger app and had learnt – get this – how to touch-text without looking,
the BlackBerry under their desks during lessons, grew up to prefer Android
phones with access to games and free, platform agnostic WhatsApp.
Which left BlackBerry out in the cold and
even its snazzily updated operating system with slick BlackBerry Hub to access
all the information you needed most conveniently, couldn’t keep up. There were
several missteps, like launching the BlackBerry tablet, the Playbook, without
email on board.
Most of all, though, it was the absence of
apps which did for BlackBerry, just as the same issue caused problems for
Microsoft’s Windows Phone.
More recently, BlackBerry flirted with
Android, skinning the Google operating system with DTEK, a security overlay
which analysed what apps were doing and alerted you accordingly (A flashlight
app? Wants to use location settings? Really?).
Today’s launch is the fullest expression
of the Android BlackBerry system, promising the latest OS (Nougat 7.1) and a
display which, executives pointed out at the launch, offers more usable space
than most touchscreen phones once their touch keyboards block part of the
screen.
Forbes will be reviewing the
phone in detail soon but first impressions are strong. Gareth Hurn, Global Head
of Device Portfolio, said the new phone is built to be unlike any other, to
suit “professional consumers looking for something different.
It keeps them safe
and secure and helps them get the maximum of their day.” Hurn says this phone
will appeal to those “who were seduced by another product with a bigger screen
or more applications – but those differences are over.” He described it as the
world’s most secure Android phone.
The battery, he says, will last
for 26 hours in mixed use and can regain a 50 per cent charge in 30 minutes.
Key among the innovations, and a
clear signifier of the KEYone name is the fact that the keyboard works like a
touchpad as well. If one of the three words suggested as you type turns out to
be one you want, just flick upwards underneath the word to see it appear
onscreen. Swipe left and right on the space bar to scroll forward or back
between web pages.
And you can custom-set each of
the 26 keys to perform a function, two each, actually. A short press on W can
launch WhatsApp, a long press invoke the Weather app. Or assign a contact or
your home address in Google Maps and so on.
The BlackBerry execs were
certainly bullish, espousing that “Tens of millions of customers are going to
come back because they have different priorities.”
Time will tell, but it certainly
looks more promising than some of its more recent attempts.
Credit: David Phelan (Forbes)
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