Blackberry KeyTwo: The next steps on untravelled paths
7.6.2018
Translation: machine translated
Video: Stephanie Tresch
With the Blackberry KeyTwo, the new Blackberry under the company banner TCL Communications is showing its colours. It is not a phone for everyone, but one for the fans of the brand, which some people keep saying is dead. However, it is not about to die, nor should it.
Berlin, Marriot Hotel. While the entrance looks like any other hotel, the first floor is inconspicuously decorated with two banners. On them is a brand name that has had fans for years: Blackberry. The cult brand, which saved itself from misery last year with the KeyOne, is presenting a new phone: The BlackBerry KeyTwo, stylised by the manufacturer as the "Key²".
Yes, it has a keyboard.
The commitment to a course
François Mahieu, Global Head of Sales at Blackberry, talks about the past year. The KeyOne story has been a success, even if the phone is only perceived as a niche product. Fans of the device appreciated it and Blackberry learnt a lot.
Logan Bell, Senior Product Manager at Blackberry since 2011, talks about his brand. Time is the most valuable resource of our time. "We live in a society that maximises the use of time," he says. In queues, we check messages, read Instagram feeds and so on.
In addition, security is becoming increasingly important. And design, of course. With the latter point, he is striking a chord with many manufacturers this year. Honor has an interface that displays 36 different colours. Huawei has a glimmering effect with a little less. OnePlus will bring a kind of matt white with the colour "Silk White". The KeyTwo comes in two colours:
- Matt black
- Metal
The matt black looks just like you would imagine a smartphone to look: matt and black. Sure, it looks chic and all, but no one is going to win a design award with a black phone. That's why the star of the show is clearly the metal phone.
The naked metal looks great, even if the keys of the physical keyboard are still black and the back is covered with a profiled black plastic. This is intended to maximise the phone's grip.
The KeyTwo as the culmination of all Blackberries?
While the KeyOne felt like a bit of an experiment, Blackberry has gone all out with the KeyTwo, says Logan. The metal body makes quite an impression, both visually and haptically. The back remains profiled, just like the design in general.
The device weighs 168 grams and is 8.5 millimetres thick, so it can easily keep up with the big brands. All buttons have been moved to the right-hand side so that right-handers can easily operate all buttons with their thumb.
Under the bonnet, the KeyTwo has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 system-on-a-chip (SoC), 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal memory with an SD card slot.
Since the Blackberry audience likes to make phone calls, noise cancelling has been built into the phone to improve call quality. Plus the entire Google Suite, Google Assistant and Google Lens. The rear cameras deliver 12 megapixel resolution, plus a dual optical zoom.
"It's incredibly important that you mention that the KeyTwo runs on Android," a man in a black suit tells me after the event, "because many people believe that Blackberry still works on its own operating system". Ah, yes. Right. Well then: The little machine runs Android. So you have all the apps from the Google Play Store that you can install. But now we want to talk to each other like adults again, don't we?
As normal as this sounds so far, the KeyTwo will be exciting when it comes to the battery. Because it becomes intelligent. An example: You have a meeting at 4 pm. A normal smartphone slowly but surely starts to run out of battery at this time of day if you use it all day long. According to Blackberry's plan, the battery management system should now get in touch at 3 pm and say "Hey, if you want to get home easily, now is the time to charge your phone. Because after that you have a meeting and then you can't." If that works, then Blackberry will have done the smartphone world a small favour. But even without it, the constantly optimising battery lives on and should achieve up to two days of battery life in normal operation.
Let's talk about what's important: the keyboard
The KeyOne has shown Blackberry that the physical keyboard is far from obsolete. Even if the manufacturer is no longer a manufacturer, but rather a holding company that owns the rights to and patents for the brand. In 2016, the Chinese company TCL Communication took over the licence to manufacture Blackberry hardware. A few rectangles with rounded corners followed until Blackberry found its way back to its roots with the KeyOne.
For the KeyTwo, the TCL/Blackberry construct learnt from the KeyOne, as until then there were no reference values for modern smartphones with a physical keyboard. Apart from the more or less flopped Blackberry Priv from 2015, Blackberry's engineers have therefore gone one step further back. The reference phones are the Blackberry 10, as well as its predecessors such as the 9900 series, and the KeyOne. The lessons Blackberry has learnt:
- All keys are 20% larger
- Less borders next to the screen make the screen bigger and move it slightly upwards
- The key labelling has been given a new font
- The keyboard lighting can be configured
- The entire keyboard can be used as a kind of mousepad and swipe movements can be performed on the keys. This is not new, but still nice
Blackberry has also introduced the so-called Speed Key (SK). This provides shortcuts with the keyboard. You can define these shortcuts yourself. SK+W opens WhatsApp. Or any other app you fancy. SK+Q dials your mum's number, if that's what you want. Power users will probably really appreciate this feature.
It is also possible to define long press shortcuts on the keys. This means that if you press and hold Q, the KeyTwo will not dial your mum's number, but your dad's.
This results in a theoretical maximum of two shortcut levels of 34 abbreviations each, i.e. a total of 68, provided that the Sym, Backspace, Alt, Enter, Shift, Space and Microphone function keys can also be configured.
I can't answer the all-important question: Is the Blackberry KeyTwo a good phone? I have no idea. I spent about 30 minutes fiddling around with the device, testing out features and even shooting a video and taking pictures of the device. I suspect that the KeyTwo delivers decent performance and that Blackberry is catering to a niche market with its chosen course.
Therefore: If you have a KeyTwo, let me know what you think.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
Smartphone
Follow topics and stay updated on your areas of interest
24 comments
later