It's probably overpriced, but there will be a market for this. I'm on the list. The most common comments we read about Blackberry are: they're going to fail, they're irrelevant etc etc. Why does anyone care? It's similar to manual transmission cars; sure they're being marginalized, but there's always going to be an audience for niche things. The phone business is pretty competitive, but come on, they're all the same appliances basically. This new blackberry phone is functional and unique among the bland landscape of me too appliances.
It's not specifically about having 'difficulties' with manual transmission. There is definitely a way to describe the changing American taste in transmission types that is more informative and less insulting than conjuring up the image of an American struggling to operate a manual. There are even valid arguments for automatic transmissions (a few of which apply directly to self driving cars as well). No need to be insensitive.
It would certainly not be without precedent, I mean americans having problems with common things.
Automatic is not quite there yet, maybe good enough for driving on the highway, but certainly far below optional in urban scenarios. There is some potential for this to improve with location aware smart cars and machine learning, but time will tell if that will materialize.
Pretty much every group of people can be observed having "problems" with certain "common things". It's just not an informative or useful statement, and I think you know that. I think you're intentionally making broad statements to insult people.
Hey, if it wasn't true you wouldn't have a reason to feel offended.
Plus it is really uncalled for, since "having problems" does not necessary imply inferiority as you suggest. Maybe they just got used to automatic first. I've seen many american experienced drivers struggling with learning how to shift gears, while kids which have never driven a car are very quick to get it. For me switching gears is an instinct, but for someone who never had to do it, it is fairly complex, there is the stick, there is the extra pedal, there is the delicate moment you have to release the clutch so you don't grind the gears and ruin the box, you don't have the coordination and muscle memory, and there is this looming "why do I even have to do this?" in your head that further impairs you from learning how to do it.
Additionally - granted, there are plenty of clumsy or silly people everywhere, but none are as full of themselves as them murricans. Evidently on some level you are haunted by subconscious inferiority complexes, thus you perceive "have difficulties" as implication in inferiority by default, which puts it in conflict with some assumed superiority complex that exists on a conscious level, thus putting your in defensive mode. ADOY!
My first two cars were manuals when I was first starting out, and for years I wanted to get another one, but for the most part unless you're willing to special order and get an otherwise min-spec vehicle, you simply can't with most models. The vehicles on dealer lots are all autos, and automatic is the standard and only available option on most upmarket trims.
Most car here in my country are manual, but recently something that didn't really take off in the USA is the double-clutch, which is sorta automatic but with manual transmission. DSG, PDK and all the others are a big things here now and will be even bigger in the years to come.
The real problem is you can buy another Chinese mid-range phone with these specs, minus the keyboard, for <$200. So you are paying $350 for a keyboard.
You have to take into consideration the touch-enabled physical keyboard and BlackBerry's software modifications, both of which add to the cost. Still, I'd have liked to see a $450-500 MSRP. Unless reviews around the web are stellar, I'd probably wait for a $50 discount before purchasing.
I feel like if a phone like this had come out around the time the Z10 (with Android) came out it might have saved the company. At this point they're just beating a dead horse, they're 4 years behind demand. I don't see Blackberry coming back at this point.
I've felt from as soon as it was clear Android and iOS were going to be the two major platforms (around 2010 or so) Blackberry should have switched itself to a services/messaging company and they could have been a very successful enterprise focused company. They spent so much time trying to save their phone business that the let the one thing that really differentiated them wither and die.
Physical keys were always nice, but they eat up space that could have been used as a screen. Nonetheless, I've written chunks of a novel on the road using a Blackberry 8820 and the keypad was excellent for creative writing while waiting in airports or while stuck in a hotel room. After I got my hands on the 8820, I sometimes didn't bother traveling with a laptop because I could work pretty effectively on the Blackberry. That's not something that I think is as easy to do with on-screen keys so if I wanted to do something like that again, I'd not only need to carry the phone, but also a bluetooth keyboard or good thumb board.
I always thought I cannot do without a physical keyboard on my phone. Then I discovered Swift keyboard app. With its ability to recognize and predict my words even with typo, imo it makes the physical keys useless since I can type much faster and the phone has more screen space.
For you. But for example for me QWERTY keyboard on phone is a must. Currently using BB Passport Silver Edition and in comparison with whatever comes from Android camp or Cupertino this phone is for me. BB OS is nice. I like it from engineering point of view, but heck I love this keyboard. So the only question is how wide is this KEYOne -- if this is wide like passport, then phones have future here. If not, well, I'll probably need to either quit using phone or use them just for calls.
I feel like a Snapdragon 650 or 652 would have made this almost justifiable for the price, but the 625? And no NFC? That keyboard isn't nearly compelling enough to justify that price tag.
You can definitely feel the difference in size between 14nm and 28nm.
In other news, A53 takes little-to-no power at both 14nm and 28nm. Actually having good enough cores to take advantage of race-to-idle power optimization plans will always be advantageous.
Me too. 28nm was a garbage node all around, that's why I didn't update till the Redmi 4 Prime with the 625 (which BTW, seems to be a lot of the same HW as this phone, but for 1/3 of the cost). I like getting 3-4 days battery life.
3GB of RAM is acceptable given that this phone will struggle to run multiple tasks due to processor limitations far before the RAM becomes a bottleneck.
Indeed. I would love to see the claim of lower power consumption by S625 over S652 properly investigated, old-Anandtech style. The S652 should be far more efficient as the big A72s get work done fast and efficiently, then shutdown. A53s can't compete -- they're not supposed to. It's the whole point of big.LITTLE.
I"ll type so much better with the physical keyboard. Can't wait!! My trusty Z10 has been faithful since its release and the specs on the Keyone are vastly superior to it.....why would anyone give up all the Blackberry features...even just HUB is so cool. Why do I need more chip speed...designing the new space station?
Hey, BB has been WAY overdue for a pretty awesomeness phone! That's MY opinion. I've tried Android, eh. Apple is great! But my fingers just about most of the time got the worse ring key therefore spell the wrong word. I'm down, I'll buy it! I hope Verizon has it first.
Something about this processor seems off... 8 cores all the same speed? Can anything generate 8 decent threads to actually make use of this? I'd have thought if you're going to use the A53s on a 14nm process and not use any high speed cores then you might as well just have 4? Is Android capable of the thread management required to utilise 8 cores properly?
Just stop what you're doing, BlackBerry. Make a landscape slider QWERTY with decent mid-range specs and a good price point, make the bootloader unlockable and sell a boatload of them.
I can tell a lot of people are not familiar with newer BlackBerry PKBs so let me try to clarify how it works.
1) Blackberry hardware keyboard is powered by Swift keyboard which means over the time it will predict your vocabulary and will offer you relevant suggestion, it also predicts words as you start typing and it will give you three suggestions and if one of them is correct you just swipe up with your finger over hardware keyboard to accept it, no need for finger travel and tap on suggestion. It also allows you to type in multiple languages at once which is very neat.
2) Hardware keyboard is not just for typing its for commands and shortcuts as well. For example you can press and hold H to start navigation to your home address, or you can press and hold any key to call someone directly. Hold and press T for Torchlight LED. Or hold N for new text. Hold space bar to record the voice. This behavior depends heavily on operating system and while BB10 had all of those function they could go only so far on Android. Android doesn't recognize PKB in its SDK which is a shame really so all the work you see on KEYone is done by Blackberry developers and I am not sure if other app developers will be able to integrate KEYone keyboard as shortcuts within the app. For example in Facebook messenger you could tap F to find friends or N to go to News, etc instead of hunting these options all over the header or sliding context menu.
3) There is a concern if hardware keyboard takes away from the screen or not. Well that all depends on OS really. First of all when software keyboard shows up it actually takes a lot more of the screen estate to accommodate the size of the key due to lack of physical separation between the keys than hardware keyboard. Software keyboard relies on sight while hardware keyboard relies on touch for usage. When software keyboard is retracted there is a lot more screen estate for content but hardware keyboard has functionality that saves you finger travel as well as multiple required taps to get you to the action you want to. There is benefit to both and that solely depends what operating system wants to be. BB10 was optimized for text input and textual communication, that's why its devices had 1:1 screen ratio cause width was more important than height, it is also a lot lighter on headers and footers within the apps so they don't take limited screen space. Android is media consumption oriented environment and like that it prefers tall narrow screen so more graphical content could be fed on single screen. Reason why KEYone looks kind of weird is that unproportional tallness it exhibits on top of the keyboard. I understand they wanted one hand use but in my honest opinion Android would benefit a lot more from wide portrait screen device with two hand hardware keyboard so all text, sheets, slides mobile users could fit their documents comfortably over the screen. Sheets look horrible on 16:9 devices in portrait mode and so do Slides and even Text.
It's good to see that after a decade of fail worthy of a case study for business school, Blackberry's main licensee is continuing the tradition. What a joke.
All BlackBerry had to do was integrate with Android as soon as it started gaining traction, keep the hardware tailored for their niche, add their own software specific features and they would have been financially booming. Instead, they decided to keep their BB OS which had little third party support and rarely update the hardware, which is what led to their downfall in the manufacturing side of mobile devices.
The phone looks like a quality build -- with a USB 3.1 CONNECTION! Hello, this means that you're not limited to THIRTY MEGABYTES per second.
PHYSICAL, TOP NOTCH, BENCHMARK, GOLD STANDARD of Smartphone keyboards. NO!? What is WRONG with all the negative winers!?? WTF? 8-core, 14nm generation SoC. This should give great battery life. Higher PPI than iPhone, no?? Blackberry security!? No?? BBM Messaging HALF THE PRICE OF THE iPhone? Is expensive?
We ALL win if the product is good -- because that's what makes the products we get, better.
Just get the thing in your hand, use it for a month or two and then say what you think of it.
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osxandwindows - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
$550 for this?Really?
dgingeri - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I know, right? Overpriced.tboneblack - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It's probably overpriced, but there will be a market for this. I'm on the list. The most common comments we read about Blackberry are: they're going to fail, they're irrelevant etc etc. Why does anyone care? It's similar to manual transmission cars; sure they're being marginalized, but there's always going to be an audience for niche things. The phone business is pretty competitive, but come on, they're all the same appliances basically. This new blackberry phone is functional and unique among the bland landscape of me too appliances.nonig - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I think most europeans (and other countries around the world) would find it hard to view manual transmission as "niche".ddriver - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
People outside the US don't seem to have difficulties with manual transmission, so cars with automatic are fairly rare.Not that there are much parallels between the two. The merits of blackberry basically boil down to "blackberry says its good".
lazarpandar - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It's not specifically about having 'difficulties' with manual transmission. There is definitely a way to describe the changing American taste in transmission types that is more informative and less insulting than conjuring up the image of an American struggling to operate a manual. There are even valid arguments for automatic transmissions (a few of which apply directly to self driving cars as well). No need to be insensitive.ddriver - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It would certainly not be without precedent, I mean americans having problems with common things.Automatic is not quite there yet, maybe good enough for driving on the highway, but certainly far below optional in urban scenarios. There is some potential for this to improve with location aware smart cars and machine learning, but time will tell if that will materialize.
lazarpandar - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Pretty much every group of people can be observed having "problems" with certain "common things". It's just not an informative or useful statement, and I think you know that. I think you're intentionally making broad statements to insult people.ddriver - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Hey, if it wasn't true you wouldn't have a reason to feel offended.Plus it is really uncalled for, since "having problems" does not necessary imply inferiority as you suggest. Maybe they just got used to automatic first. I've seen many american experienced drivers struggling with learning how to shift gears, while kids which have never driven a car are very quick to get it. For me switching gears is an instinct, but for someone who never had to do it, it is fairly complex, there is the stick, there is the extra pedal, there is the delicate moment you have to release the clutch so you don't grind the gears and ruin the box, you don't have the coordination and muscle memory, and there is this looming "why do I even have to do this?" in your head that further impairs you from learning how to do it.
Additionally - granted, there are plenty of clumsy or silly people everywhere, but none are as full of themselves as them murricans. Evidently on some level you are haunted by subconscious inferiority complexes, thus you perceive "have difficulties" as implication in inferiority by default, which puts it in conflict with some assumed superiority complex that exists on a conscious level, thus putting your in defensive mode. ADOY!
twtech - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
My first two cars were manuals when I was first starting out, and for years I wanted to get another one, but for the most part unless you're willing to special order and get an otherwise min-spec vehicle, you simply can't with most models. The vehicles on dealer lots are all autos, and automatic is the standard and only available option on most upmarket trims.Valis - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Most car here in my country are manual, but recently something that didn't really take off in the USA is the double-clutch, which is sorta automatic but with manual transmission. DSG, PDK and all the others are a big things here now and will be even bigger in the years to come.aryonoco - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
In Europe and Japan, over 80% of cars sold have manual transmissions. Manual transmissions dominate sales in Asia, Africa and Latin America as well.Pretty much the only markets where automatics outsell manuals are North America and Australia.
bolkhov - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Wrong.Most passenger cars in Japan use automatic (mostly CVT now), and many models don't offer manual transmisstion at all, even as an option.
Samus - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Australia, really?Samus - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
The real problem is you can buy another Chinese mid-range phone with these specs, minus the keyboard, for <$200. So you are paying $350 for a keyboard.Nate650 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
You have to take into consideration the touch-enabled physical keyboard and BlackBerry's software modifications, both of which add to the cost. Still, I'd have liked to see a $450-500 MSRP. Unless reviews around the web are stellar, I'd probably wait for a $50 discount before purchasing.osxandwindows - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Sure, that keyboard must have been so expensive.Makaveli - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I agree its over priced.$450-$550 MRSP would have been ideal.
Other than that good looking phone for a business user.
SunnyNW - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
What exactly is a "touch-enabled" keyboard? And where is the fingerprint sensor, in the space bar?Flunk - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I feel like if a phone like this had come out around the time the Z10 (with Android) came out it might have saved the company. At this point they're just beating a dead horse, they're 4 years behind demand. I don't see Blackberry coming back at this point.mjeffer - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I've felt from as soon as it was clear Android and iOS were going to be the two major platforms (around 2010 or so) Blackberry should have switched itself to a services/messaging company and they could have been a very successful enterprise focused company. They spent so much time trying to save their phone business that the let the one thing that really differentiated them wither and die.BrokenCrayons - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Physical keys were always nice, but they eat up space that could have been used as a screen. Nonetheless, I've written chunks of a novel on the road using a Blackberry 8820 and the keypad was excellent for creative writing while waiting in airports or while stuck in a hotel room. After I got my hands on the 8820, I sometimes didn't bother traveling with a laptop because I could work pretty effectively on the Blackberry. That's not something that I think is as easy to do with on-screen keys so if I wanted to do something like that again, I'd not only need to carry the phone, but also a bluetooth keyboard or good thumb board.Cliff34 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I always thought I cannot do without a physical keyboard on my phone. Then I discovered Swift keyboard app. With its ability to recognize and predict my words even with typo, imo it makes the physical keys useless since I can type much faster and the phone has more screen space.vladx - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Same here, there's no need for a QWERTY keyboard on a phone anymore.kgardas - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
For you. But for example for me QWERTY keyboard on phone is a must. Currently using BB Passport Silver Edition and in comparison with whatever comes from Android camp or Cupertino this phone is for me. BB OS is nice. I like it from engineering point of view, but heck I love this keyboard. So the only question is how wide is this KEYOne -- if this is wide like passport, then phones have future here. If not, well, I'll probably need to either quit using phone or use them just for calls.jordanclock - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I feel like a Snapdragon 650 or 652 would have made this almost justifiable for the price, but the 625? And no NFC? That keyboard isn't nearly compelling enough to justify that price tag.shing3232 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I would pick 625 over 650 or 652 anyday. 14nm is more desirable to me on a phonelmcd - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
You can definitely feel the difference in size between 14nm and 28nm.In other news, A53 takes little-to-no power at both 14nm and 28nm. Actually having good enough cores to take advantage of race-to-idle power optimization plans will always be advantageous.
hybrid2d4x4 - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Me too. 28nm was a garbage node all around, that's why I didn't update till the Redmi 4 Prime with the 625 (which BTW, seems to be a lot of the same HW as this phone, but for 1/3 of the cost). I like getting 3-4 days battery life.Nate650 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It has NFC.Fidelator - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I could swallow the 625 considering the corporate battery needs(?) But 3gb of RAM, really? What's up with those prices btw €600 vs $550?lmcd - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
3GB of RAM is acceptable given that this phone will struggle to run multiple tasks due to processor limitations far before the RAM becomes a bottleneck.Gc - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Perhaps many localizations? Is licensing unified? distribution? customer support?lmcd - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Please don't spin Snap 625 over Snap 652 as a positive ever again.Meteor2 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Indeed. I would love to see the claim of lower power consumption by S625 over S652 properly investigated, old-Anandtech style. The S652 should be far more efficient as the big A72s get work done fast and efficiently, then shutdown. A53s can't compete -- they're not supposed to. It's the whole point of big.LITTLE.lopri - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
It IS a positive because S625 is fabbed on 14nm FF while S652 is on 28nm HPM.lmcd - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Let me know when Bulldozer has better perf/watt than Thuban.Just one arbitrary counterexample to the claim that a processor on a higher node is inherently inferior to a processor on a lower node.
KonaTom - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
I"ll type so much better with the physical keyboard. Can't wait!! My trusty Z10 has been faithful since its release and the specs on the Keyone are vastly superior to it.....why would anyone give up all the Blackberry features...even just HUB is so cool. Why do I need more chip speed...designing the new space station?blzd - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
I think Hub can be downloaded from the Play store to any device.AmazonJohn75 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
Hey, BB has been WAY overdue for a pretty awesomeness phone! That's MY opinion. I've tried Android, eh. Apple is great! But my fingers just about most of the time got the worse ring key therefore spell the wrong word. I'm down, I'll buy it! I hope Verizon has it first.AmazonJohn75 - Monday, February 27, 2017 - link
See what I mean. Blah, hurry up April.philehidiot - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Something about this processor seems off... 8 cores all the same speed? Can anything generate 8 decent threads to actually make use of this? I'd have thought if you're going to use the A53s on a 14nm process and not use any high speed cores then you might as well just have 4? Is Android capable of the thread management required to utilise 8 cores properly?piroroadkill - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
Just stop what you're doing, BlackBerry. Make a landscape slider QWERTY with decent mid-range specs and a good price point, make the bootloader unlockable and sell a boatload of them.HomeworldFound - Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - link
This vs the new Nokia 3310Texax - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
I can tell a lot of people are not familiar with newer BlackBerry PKBs so let me try to clarify how it works.1) Blackberry hardware keyboard is powered by Swift keyboard which means over the time it will predict your vocabulary and will offer you relevant suggestion, it also predicts words as you start typing and it will give you three suggestions and if one of them is correct you just swipe up with your finger over hardware keyboard to accept it, no need for finger travel and tap on suggestion. It also allows you to type in multiple languages at once which is very neat.
2) Hardware keyboard is not just for typing its for commands and shortcuts as well. For example you can press and hold H to start navigation to your home address, or you can press and hold any key to call someone directly. Hold and press T for Torchlight LED. Or hold N for new text. Hold space bar to record the voice. This behavior depends heavily on operating system and while BB10 had all of those function they could go only so far on Android. Android doesn't recognize PKB in its SDK which is a shame really so all the work you see on KEYone is done by Blackberry developers and I am not sure if other app developers will be able to integrate KEYone keyboard as shortcuts within the app. For example in Facebook messenger you could tap F to find friends or N to go to News, etc instead of hunting these options all over the header or sliding context menu.
3) There is a concern if hardware keyboard takes away from the screen or not. Well that all depends on OS really. First of all when software keyboard shows up it actually takes a lot more of the screen estate to accommodate the size of the key due to lack of physical separation between the keys than hardware keyboard. Software keyboard relies on sight while hardware keyboard relies on touch for usage. When software keyboard is retracted there is a lot more screen estate for content but hardware keyboard has functionality that saves you finger travel as well as multiple required taps to get you to the action you want to. There is benefit to both and that solely depends what operating system wants to be. BB10 was optimized for text input and textual communication, that's why its devices had 1:1 screen ratio cause width was more important than height, it is also a lot lighter on headers and footers within the apps so they don't take limited screen space. Android is media consumption oriented environment and like that it prefers tall narrow screen so more graphical content could be fed on single screen. Reason why KEYone looks kind of weird is that unproportional tallness it exhibits on top of the keyboard. I understand they wanted one hand use but in my honest opinion Android would benefit a lot more from wide portrait screen device with two hand hardware keyboard so all text, sheets, slides mobile users could fit their documents comfortably over the screen. Sheets look horrible on 16:9 devices in portrait mode and so do Slides and even Text.
Bob Todd - Wednesday, March 1, 2017 - link
It's good to see that after a decade of fail worthy of a case study for business school, Blackberry's main licensee is continuing the tradition. What a joke.Itselectric - Wednesday, March 8, 2017 - link
All BlackBerry had to do was integrate with Android as soon as it started gaining traction, keep the hardware tailored for their niche, add their own software specific features and they would have been financially booming. Instead, they decided to keep their BB OS which had little third party support and rarely update the hardware, which is what led to their downfall in the manufacturing side of mobile devices.Pessimism - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link
$550 for a china-phone with a dead company's logo on it? pass.trumanhw - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
The phone looks like a quality build -- with a USB 3.1 CONNECTION! Hello, this means that you're not limited to THIRTY MEGABYTES per second.PHYSICAL, TOP NOTCH, BENCHMARK, GOLD STANDARD of Smartphone keyboards. NO!?
What is WRONG with all the negative winers!?? WTF?
8-core, 14nm generation SoC. This should give great battery life.
Higher PPI than iPhone, no??
Blackberry security!? No??
BBM Messaging
HALF THE PRICE OF THE iPhone? Is expensive?
We ALL win if the product is good -- because that's what makes the products we get, better.
Just get the thing in your hand, use it for a month or two and then say what you think of it.
I'm' horny for a damned QWERTY keyboard.