BlackBerry KEY2 Review in 2022: The Last Best Hope

e, my nightstand next to my bed uh its always there to remind me open the drawer grab, something out its its always there, a friend a timeless friend That just well, i dont i dont want to let go of it and ive still got my other blackberries as well, but yeah its a sad state of affairs and i dont want to give anybody any false hope. Theres, no phones on the horizon, theres, no licensing agreement. All more ability is gone like the dodo, theyre extinct. So really the only thing left out. There is a handful of blackberry mobile devices and the blackberry priv. If you want to go back and use one that thats, that old, its super old and of course it gets nice and warm and toasty. But i was thinking about it because its still usable, if youve, got t mobile metro by t mobile or mint, you can still pop your sim card and you can use it 4g lte and its still a decent phone snapdragon 660 running android. 8.1. The cameras are dated, the keyboard is starting to show signs of kind of wear and tear mine. The fingerprint sensor hardly ever works on this thing anymore, sometimes ill have to press the spacebar more than once to actually get it to register. Unfortunately, the one i have. I dont know if its just because of age or use – or it was one of the bad ones, but its not quite picking up every time i press it so yeah.

I always like to grab it every once in a while, and one thing that i like to do late night ill reply to tweets ill, do some tweeting ill play with it on my youtube creator, studio, ill reply to comments and stuff like that, and it just Got me to thinking, because i just hope that one day somewhere out on the horizon, somebody will be like you know what we need to get a licensing agreement with blackberry and make phones. That would be great its a pipe dream at this point. Who knows i mean the companys still in business, you never say never, but it really seems like never at this point, because we havent had a new blackberry since 2018, its the year 2022. This is running android 8.1. Its very old now were on the on the foothills of android 13. At this point, cameras are dated the screens dated never was the best lcd in the business. The battery just doesnt keep up like it used to, especially not with these new 4500 and 5000 ml batteries every time. I pick it up. It kind of frustrates me because there was so much potential here that got abandoned with tcl and with blackberry mobile because they never gave us android 9.. They never gave us. Android 10. were stuck with this android 8.1 and it just didnt it wasnt supported very well, and they certainly didnt have any follow through with it. They cut bait, they left they ran and then blackberry, just really never did anything else.

Now, when it came to this phone one of the best blackberry keyboards ever it was fantastic keyboard, lots of spacing big buttons and they did a great job. Tactility theyve got a nice key press on them. You get the shortcuts with the short press and the long press on the letters you get the speed key, you get the capacitive touch stuff, so you can scroll left and right and scroll up and down on your social media feed. It gave you a nice extension to where you could kind of just do things one handed and not have to reach up and touch the screen all the time, because youve got the keyboard right here down at the bottom of your fingertips. Compromises, though, theres a big compromise, so its a four and a half inch screen, probably the best dimensions on a modern version of a blackberry. But at this point in time, if you wanted to get a new blackberry, if they were to design a new one and make it is it something that people would even want to get now, i know the die hard enthusiasts would because the physical keyboard is more Important than everything else, if there were a new blackberry that came out in some point in time, i would use it as my daily driver. I always carry two phones. I would have one without question, because i love typing on the physical keyboard. I, like the accuracy. I, like the precision i like the tactility, i like the utility of it theres, so much packed into these keys that you can do for multitasking for speed for accuracy and its just nice to have an actual keyboard to type on.

There are compromises, though, because you lose screen real estate and i think even looking at it now absent people who are die hard, blackberry users who have been using them for a long time. I know even some people that have switched over to using a touch screen phone all touch screen phone and like hey theyre way better than i thought they were going to be ive, adjusted pretty well and by and large. I think thats, probably true, for a lot of people i type on it on a touch screen really really well in some cases, almost better than i do when it comes to a physical keyboard, but theres still days like today, where i got to re type. The same word, four or five times, because the smart touch sensitive keyboard keeps picking the wrong letter for me. So theres frustration there for somebody whos a business typing communications, oriented person like myself, probably you watching on the other end. This right here is the lifeblood of the phone, whereas you may not necessarily care if its the best camera you may not care if it has the best screen. You may not care if it has all the latest bells and whistles on it. You care about communication and typing getting messages out and getting work done, thats, where this shines thats, where it thrives and thats, i think, theres still a place for them and im not talking about the uni hurts tight in the titan pocket.

The titan slim ive got my titan pocket right here, its a decent little phone, but its not a blackberry, its its like a blackberry, it kind of it kind of scratches that itch a little bit, but its not the same. It doesnt give you the same pride and the sophistication and the familiarity and the legacy, and also one of the most important things: the security thats, something thats missing a lot of places nowadays, of course, google and their titan chip and apple and samsung, and their knox Stuff theres a lot of pretty good phone security stuff out there – maybe even rivaling some of this stuff – that was in the blackberry phone at this point, because the security and stuff is so old on there. But the phones themselves. I think the form factor is still doable. One thing that i think would be really cool is if they could find a way to make this detachable, maybe have some strong magnets right here, where the keyboard connects onto it, where you can pop it on and take it off. That would be my vision for a modern blackberry is to have a detachable keyboard, maybe even like they have on the nintendo switch. Have you seen where you can take the controller and slide it on and slide it off, where you can have a fully touch screen? Experience or you can have a controller experience and i think thats a good combination. I think that would sell really well these days.

I think a lot of people still like the idea of a physical keyboard on the phone, but they dont like the sacrifice that they have to make for the screen. So if you can make it where okay, i want it, i plug the keyboard in i dont want it. I take it off because theres things that it gets in the way for especially whenever youre, using your phone all the time, its its like having an extra little keyboard added onto the screen which for people who primarily value a keyboard, thats great, you may not care. So much but it would be nice to kind of have that unencumbered real estate. You could pull it out great for watching videos great for playing games great for doing some other stuff on your phone. So maybe that would be an idea for the best of both worlds. Maybe somebody to decide they want to come talk to me one day and ill, give them some suggestions. But in the current state of affairs the ke2 is really probably the last best hope. Thats out there for people wanting to use a blackberry, because other than that you have the key2le, which is decent, actually mines, sitting right here as well. Let me grab it. The key2le was probably my favorite of the bunch because you get almost the same experience you just dont get the touch sensitive keyboard, the keys are slightly smaller. The camera is not so great, but from a utilitarian perspective, i thought this was the best value for most people, because it gave you that keyboard experience you wanted and didnt break the bank as much as the key to, and i actually really like this rubberized texture On the back, i thought it was superior and i thought the keys were a little bit tighter than the typing experience on the key2, but the key2 is still usable.

The problems you have are security. The battery might not be holding up so well. You might have some spacebar issues like im, starting to experience. It was a big deal before with certain models, especially the first run that they produce and yeah its got other things that its missing like being able to use 5g theres no 5g. The cameras are definitely showing their age and thats kind of it it its its really nice if youve still got one to be able to pop the sim card in every once in a while, its very hard for me to use android 8.1. At this point, because i absolutely hate these capacitive touch buttons on the bottom, for the menu and for the back button and the home button im always trying to swipe, because even if you use ios with iphones, if you use the any android phone nowadays, everythings all Swipe gestures and i love the swipe gestures, and that was one thing that was i was so hoping we would get android 9 android 10 with these because it incorporated them and thats something that was so great with blackberry 10 was they basically created the all gesture Navigation, modern smartphone os. Yes, i know that theres other people who did it before. I think, with what palm or something else somebody else did but blackberry perfected. It blackbeard did a great job with it and thats. Where were at now with everything else, so i really had hoped we would get a blackberry running android to get to that point one day i would have loved to have seen that maybe we will one day, maybe somebody will come in one day and do something, But for right now, theres, nothing theres, nothing, theres, nothing on the horizon and blackberry is still just where they were at four or five years ago, fighting to stay alive but having less cash flow.

So things dont change a lot, but theyre still hanging on by a thread well see what happens with them. If they can turn things around, maybe i dont know thats a discussion for another day, but for people who are still interested and curious. If you can use the key2 today, you can, but you can only use in a very limited setup. You cant use it with att anymore, really t mobile and the subsets of that, like mint mobile and metro by t mobile are the only things that you can really use it on at this point. If you want to use it and thats basically kind of hanging on because i know a lot of people were holding out hope for the titan pocket, the titan pocket is okay, but i dont think its a replacement for this phone. The keyboards still better on here – and i think overall, the experience is still much better and, of course, its your blackberry and thats. Why? We love them its? Not because just because it has a physical keyboard, you can get a physical keyboard phone. They could make one somehow somewhere else, some other brand, but it still would never be a blackberry and nothing is ever going to be a blackberry but a blackberry and call me a snob about it. If you want, i do appreciate what unihertz does i, like? The titan pocket i like the titan slim, i think its an okay phone, but its not this, and i i do miss this.

I miss having this in my pocket as a daily driver, and i hope that one day something happens, but for now i just wanted to take a trip down memory. Lane discuss this briefly for those of you who are still curious about it. I would have to kind of caution you about buying one, though the prices are a lot. If you want to try and get one on the used market, you dont know what youre getting with the keyboard. You dont know what youre getting with the battery life theyre theyre, definitely showing their age, so be wary of that. Hopefully you can get a return policy, maybe somehow, but even at that point in time, theres nothing that you can even really get fixed nowadays, sort of probably fixing it yourself and the shelf life on the batteries. I mean phones, four years old now so there are concerns there. Definitely dont go spin the farm to try and get one, but if youve got one appreciate it use it enjoy it. It really is the best last thing hanging out hanging out around there for those of us who are keyboard enthusiasts, who love blackberry, so thats all ive got in this video just wanted to talk about that. Give some people an update who are curious on whether it still holds up whether you can still use it in 2022. At this point, you can see how long that holds up for, but thats about all i got for now.

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