BlackBerry Keyone review: The return of the keyboard warrior

The BlackBerry Keyone has a Nokia 3310-nostalgia element to it. One of the first phones I owned was the BlackBerry 8820, I got it as I started out freelance technology journalist and wanted to have emails on the go. At the time, it was the most reliable, push notification email system, a luxury back in the day.

Unfortunately, the Canadian company has declined in popularity, as with the rise of Apple and its iPhones, and the increased popularity of Google’s Android operating system with manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, HTC, Huawei and other companies, BlackBerry lost its popularity and unique selling point. With a decline in its products, BlackBerry switched from using its own operating system to Android.

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BlackBerry Keyone review: What you need to know

So what is the BlackBerry Keyone? Essentially, it’s a reimagining of the firm’s glory days, combined with a modern kind of pragmatism. It has a physical keyboard, which makes it unusual, but like many smartphones, it has a touchscreen display (albeit a small 4.5in one), and it runs Android 7.0 Nougat, so it terms of the way it functions and the apps it can run, it’s as normal as they come.

Essentially, this is an Android smartphone that physical keyboard diehards have been waiting for. The trouble is that it’s pricey and the core specification is somewhat underwhelming.

BlackBerry Keyone: Price and competition

If you’re after a smartphone with a physical keyboard, there’s essentially no competition for the BlackBerry Keyone, unless you fancy ruining your Samsung Galaxy S7 with a case that blocks most of its screen. Perhaps Blackberry knows this and it’s why has set the price so high.

It’s available SIM-free for £499 at Selfridges and at Carphone Warehouse. We also expect it to become available on contract, although no prices have yet been announced. In the US, the KeyOne is available for $549 through selected retailers.

At that price the competition among phones without hardware keyboards is steep. It’s more expensive than the superlative OnePlus 3T, £50 cheaper than the excellent Huawei P10 and a touch pricier than the Honor 8 Pro, but anyone looking to spend this much on a smartphone will almost certainly have also considered moving up to an LG G6 (£650), Samsung Galaxy S8 (£679) or an iPhone 7 (£599).

BlackBerry KeyOne specifications

• 4.5in, 3:2 aspect ratio, 1,680 x 1,080 screen
• 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor
• 3GB of RAM
• 32GB storage
• microSD slot
• 12-megapixel f/2.0 rear camera with phase-detect autofocus and dual-LED flash
• 8-megapixel f/2.2 front camera
• Android 7.1 Nougat
• Price: £499 / $549 / €599
• Release date: 27 April 2017

BlackBerry KeyOne: Key features and design

I guess what I’m saying here is that the BlackBerry Keyone has its work cut out, and in when it comes to its appearance things don’t get off on the right foot. Although its appearance is pleasant enough, it doesn’t have what you’d call supermodel looks. Sure, it’s practical. The dimpled, soft-touch plastic rear, anodised silver frame and Gorilla Glass screen topping look like they’d survive the odd encounter with keys in your pocket. Also I also rather like the exaggerated lines of the Keyone’s bluntly rounded edges.

However, it’s a rather dumpy 9.4mm thick and 180g in weight and, considering the display is a mere 4.5in across the diagonal, the chassis of the phone is pretty wide and tall, measuring 72.4mm across and 149mm from top to toe. That’s mainly due to the need to accommodate that physical keyboard, but surely BlackBerry could have shaved off a bit more than this.

Elsewhere, it’s fairly run of the mill. The right edge accommodates a volume rocker and what looks initially to be the phone’s power key, but turns out to be a customisable shortcut key for whatever you want. The SIM and microSD tray sits above the volume buttons and, on the opposite side, you’ll find the power key. The bottom edge hosts a USB Type-C port, and there’s no way to remove or replace the battery, at least not quickly.

So is it worth sacrificing a big screen for that keyboard? Well, it isn’t typical BlackBerry fare, that’s for sure. The click of each sculpted key is positive enough, but it’s a little soft and rubbery in feel – a long way from the hard, plastic keys of old. And, while I’ve found it relatively comfortable to type on I’m not yet convinced it’s any better than a decent touchscreen keyboard in terms of speed and accuracy. Perhaps I need more practice, but the lack of Swype text entry, in particular, had me pining for my Pixel XL after a couple of days of use.

This keyboard offers more than just a collection of buttons, though; BlackBerry has also attempted to beef it up in a handful of clever ways. To start with, the surface of the keyboard is touch-sensitive, so you can, with a swipe of the thumb, use it to navigate left and right through your homescreens and scroll vertically through menus and web pages.

Plus, while typing, you can select one of the three-word suggestions that pop up at the bottom of the screen simply by swiping up beneath it. Oddly, though, you can’t pan around Google Maps with the keyboard.

The space bar doubles up as your fingerprint reader, which is clever and works well, but I did have to keep reminding myself it was there. And BlackBerry’s software allows you to assign keyboard shortcuts to short and long presses of the individual letter keys, so you could launch Chrome, for instance, by clicking the C key. I’m not sure this is any quicker or better than simply tapping a shortcut icon on the touchscreen, though.

BlackBerry Keyone review: Display

Initial impressions of the 4.5in IPS screen on the BlackBerry Keyone are positive. To the eye, there’s plenty of contrast and colours look balanced and rich without being oversaturated. I’m not sure how long I could put up with the small dimensions. The Keyone’s screen simply feels cramped compared with phones of a similar size and shape that don’t have to accommodate a physical keyboard.

Measurements carried out with our X-rite colour calibrator back up these initial impressions. It’s a bright screen, but at 497cd/m2 not exceptionally so for IPS screens. Samsung’s AMOLED displays are capable of going brighter than this, as are Apple’s IPS-based iPhone displays. Still, you shouldn’t have too much trouble reading your emails unless the sun is really intense.

From eyeballing the display I’d guessed its colour performance would be respectable and that turned out to be the case. It’s capable of reproducing 96.5%% of the sRGB colour space, which is good and means colours don’t look muddy or dull.

In short, the BlackBerry’s display is of decent quality, technically speaking. It won’t knock your socks off and it’s too small for my liking, but if that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make to get a physical keyboard, then it can’t be considered a weakness.

BlackBerry Keyone review: Performance

When it comes to performance, however, the Keyone certainly isn’t competitive with other phones around the £500 mark. It runs a 2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor instead of one of an 821, 825 or 835, has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage as standard.

The phone feels reasonably responsive in everyday use but it isn’t super slick. Scrolling through web pages and menus occasionally felt stuttery, launching into various parts of BlackBerry’s custom Android Launcher software, particularly the keyboard shortcuts, frequently took a second or two to activate. It isn’t a disaster, but at this price, I’d expect out-of-box perfection, not slightly ponderous performance.

I was unable to get the Keyone to run Geekbench 4 without crashing, but to give you an idea of the sort of speed to expect, I’ve substitued in scores from the Huawei Nova, which has the same CPU and RAM setup. It did run the GFXBench test, though, and this demonstrates unequivocally that performance is sub-par for the price. Effectively, the BlackBerry Keyone is delivering budget-class smartphone performance, which for this sort of cash is somewhat disappointing.

The flipside of this low performance should be greater efficiency, especially when coupled with a reasonably large 3,505mAh battery. Anecdotally, that appears to be the case. After using it for a week, I’ve seen slightly better-than-average battery life in normal use. It lasts longer than my Pixel XL with the same general usage and comfortably gets me from a bleary-eyed 6am to 11pm in the evening without needing a top-up.

In the video battery test, things don’t look quite so good. Playing back a video on loop with flight mode engaged and the scree set to a brightness of 170cd/m2, Keyone lasted 12hrs 24mins; that’s not bad but it’s also slightly below average. The cheaper OnePlus 3T lasted 13hrs 22mins in this test, and the Pixel XL 15hrs 55mins.

BlackBerry Keyone review: Software

As for software, the BlackBerry KeyOne has Android 7.1 Nougat onboard, which is as you’d expect of a smartphone launched in 2017. This is not stock Android, however, and it’s Android launcher software is a little more interesting than most.

The good news is that BlackBerry has resisted the urge to fiddle with the look of the OS, and unlike some (Huawei, I’m looking at you), it has left the fundamental building blocks intact. That means you get the stock Android pull-down notification and app drawer, and the homescreen works in a familiar way and looks largely the same.

BlackBerry has added notification badges to homescreen app icons, though, and contextual popup menus, the presence of which is indicated via a series of dots below icons where it’s available. This, in my view, adds needless clutter and unwanted complication; I could do without it. There’s also, rather pointlessly, a redesigned look for the recent apps menu with a tessellated tile-based view of recent apps. It’s different to look at but no more or less functional.

Slightly more useful is the addition of the BlackBerry Hub to the Keyone’s Android launcher. Again, I’m not totally convinced of the need for yet another way of accessing messages on Android, but Hub does have some handy features. In particular, those using it as a work phone may appreciate its ability to gather Slack, SMS, Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter messages all in one place.

It doesn’t integrate your Gmail account by default but you can add that ability if you want to view your email alongside everything else. It can even help you manage your calendar, offering a quick view of your daily agenda with a quick swipe down from the top of the screen. You’ll still need to use Android’s Calendar app to set up new appointments, though.

Then there’s BlackBerry’s DTEK app, which gives you an overview of the various security aspects of your phone, for example whether you have encryption enabled, or developer options switched on. This is all useful stuff, but it’s only an overview, no more no less; tapping any of the alerts simply whisks you off to the relevant part of the phone’s settings so you can remedy the situation directly.

BlackBerry Keyone review: Camera

Finally, to the camera, which in the past has been BlackBerry handsets’ Achilles heel. Here, things look promising on paper. You get a 12-megapixel camera on the rear (based on a Sony-manufactured sensor) with phase-detect autofocus, a bright aperture of f/2.0 and a dual-LED flash.

Results from the rear snapper are pretty good. In our outdoor tests with both HDR enabled and disabled, the Keyone’s camera captured crisp details, reasonably accurate colours and performance was quite snappy. I compared the shots with some I took at the same time with the Google Pixel XL and there wasn’t a huge amount of difference between them. The Pixel XL delivered a mite more detail, colours were even more accurate and exposures slightly better balanced – the BlackBerry showed a tendency to darken shadows somewhat – but there wasn’t a huge difference in overall quality.

As ever, though, it’s in low light that the Keyone’s camera falls short. Although it preserves colours well, anything scenes captured indoors without the flash look soft, and moving subjects have a tendency to be horribly blurred. The Keyone’s tendency to darken shadows comes to the fore here, too, to the extent that you lose details in darker areas of your scene.

Attempt to brighten your photos using the exposure compensation control, though, and you’ll likely experience even more blur. This is likely a result of a lack of optical image stabilisation (OIS).

BlackBerry Keyone review: Verdict

BlackBerry’s decline as a brand has been sad to see over the past few years, but it’s good to see it’s not bowing out without a fight. If you still hanker after a phone with a keyboard, the BlackBerry KeyOne is a phone you might actually want to consider, despite the relatively high price of £499.

Before you go all nostalgic on me, though, ask yourself this: do you really, really need a physical keyboard? Do you really have trouble entering text with your current on-screen keyboard? And do you really want a chunky phone in your pocket with none of the big-screen payback that comes with a phone like the Huawei P10 Plus, the Mate 9 or the Google Pixel XL?

My guess is that, if you really think about it and weigh-up the options, you’ll almost certainly come to the conclusion that this isn’t the smartphone for you, and you’d be better off buying any number of its rivals at around this price.