BlackBerry's back, surprisingly, with a bang. Meet the BlackBerry Priv, the latest handset from the Canadian smartphone maker, but it's not your typical BlackBerry. Instead, it runs Android, boasts flagship specs and features a slide-out physical keyboard that's just like the rest of the BlackBerry collection. With BlackBerry under plenty of pressure, its latest handset could be make or break for the company - but is it any good? We spent some quality time with one to find out.
The good
If you've been waiting for BlackBerry to make a competent phone that brings its typically decent build quality and physical keyboard together with Android, this is your ideal phone. With enough firepower under the hood to rival top-flight handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and LG G4, the BlackBerry Priv has a lot going for it, and it's bolstered by its slide-out keyboard that will let your thumbs unleash their muscle memory quickly and effectively.
With a 5.4-inch Quad HD AMOLED display that also curves on the sides like the Galaxy S6 Edge, the Priv is a huge, dominating phone, and considering it packs in a slide out keyboard, it's surprisingly thin. While not as svelte as the 7.1-mm thick iPhone 6s, the Priv measures up at a decent 9.1mm that's still easily pocketable, and it's comfortable in the hand too, helped by the curves. It's not the lightest phone out there, but it's manageable and isn't a cause for concern. Of course, sliding out the keyboard makes the Priv feel even longer, but it's not especially top-heavy, and the keyboard itself packs in some nifty tricks, such as being able to double up as a trackpad, letting you scroll through pages with ease. That quad HD display simply looks fantastic, with deep blacks and vivid colours, and it can go toe-to-toe with some of its top rivals.
On the back you'll find what looks like a textured back, but it's instead a grippy, Kevlar-esque material that feels a bit like rubber, and it's actually pretty grippy. It's not as luxurious as some past BlackBerry models, and it's not as slick as a full glass or aluminium back, but it won't slip out of your hand easily. The rear of the phone is also home to its 18-megapixel camera, which comes with Schneider-Kreuznach optics and a dual-tone flash. It sports optical image stablisation (OIS) and it can shoot in 4K too, and we were pleasantly surprised by its quality. BlackBerry phones in the past have been known to have rather lacklustre cameras, so it's refreshing to see a capable shooter here that can rival the likes of the LG G4. It doesn't spot any fancy laser focusing, but there are Instagram-style live filters and you can use the keyboard's spacebar as a shutter key.
BlackBerry has equipped the Priv with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 808 quad-core processor along with 3GB of RAM, and that helps it compete with the top-end handsets out on the market. It's not the fastest phone out there, but it's got plenty of power to get you through the most demanding apps and games, and we didn't notice a whole lot of stutter. It's not the most power-hungry phone either, which means its 3,410mAh battery can help it last for ages. We managed to squeeze out around two days of average use before needing to recharge it, which included web browsing, Spotify streaming, YouTube watching and plenty of email writing. Your mileage may vary depending on how often you use power hungry apps, but we're impressed by how long it lasts, especially as it sports a Quad HD display. BlackBerry has given you 32GB of storage to play with, which can be boosted with a microSD card up to a whopping 2TB of space - that's plenty of potential storage, which will come in handy if you're shooting in 4K a lot.
As the first BlackBerry phone running Android, you might expect the Canadian phone maker to chuck on its own skin and a load of bloatware to make it feel more like BlackBerry 10, but we're pleased to report it's stuck relatively close to stock Android. BlackBerry has brought over some of its best features though from BlackBerry 10, including the BlackBerry Hub which pulls your social feeds, emails, phone calls and notifications into one place, while there's also a security app called Dtek which gives you a security rating depending on how secure your phone is. It can also check through permissions, to let you make sure apps aren't accessing features of your phone they shouldn't be like your location or microphone, and it works fairly well.
We haven't seen an Android phone sport its own physical keyboard for a very long time, but we're pleasantly surprised with BlackBerry's effort. It's very similar to what BlackBerry has crafted in the past, and you'll be right at home if you've used a set of the company's keys before, but it's also not just your typical keyboard - it also sports capacitive touch gestures too. That means you can scroll along the keyboard to scroll up and down a page, or you can use it to help select a portion of text. It's little touches like this that have us really liking the keyboard, and while software keyboards have been getting better and better, this is your best bet if you really want a physical set of keys to hammer out emails with on the go.
The bad
BlackBerry's first Android effort is largely quite impressive, but it does have a few shortcomings. Even though we've updated all the pre-installed apps, we still ran into quite a few bugs and quirks. We'd run into app crashes, our taps aren't always recognised, while we've also noticed the phone does get hot at times. We'll put this down to pre-launch jitters, but as it stands, it's just about usable. It also ships out of the box with Android 5.1 Lollipop and not the latest Marshmallow release, but BlackBerry's promising it'll arrive next year.
While we're pleased with the rear camera, we did notice it can be rather slow to boot up and actually snap an image. That's disappointing if you want to take an image swiftly, but it's not too much of a problem if you have time to wait for it to load up and frame your shot. The front-facing camera though, at 2-megapixels, is rather disappointing. It's placed on the far right of the phone's front edge, making video calls rather disjointed, while the quality is middling at best.
We're also rather annoyed at constant notifications for BBM, which don't want to permanently go away. If you're already an Android user, you're unlikely to use BlackBerry's messaging service as there are plenty of other heavy contenders out there, meaning we had to begrudgingly sign up just to make the notification - and the flashing red light - go away.
Our biggest issue with the Priv though is the price: at £560, it's an expensive piece of kit, but it's far too late to the party to really command a high price. With cheaper Android phones out there that can be had with better specs, it's a hard sell even though it's the only Android blower with a physical keyboard. It just doesn't feel as premium as its rivals, even though under the hood it does boast some impressive specs.
The bottom line
The BlackBerry Priv is the best handset the company has made to date, but as an Android phone, it feels rather late to the party. With an impressive display, a competent camera and an awesome keyboard, it's a solid phone that sounds great on paper, but it feels lacking in other ways, and it can't quite match many of the top blowers out there in terms of overall quality and performance. It's the best phone to get if you really, really want a physical keyboard, but compared to flagship rivals like the LG G4, the Samsung Galaxy S6 or even the Moto X Style, it's just not the complete package we were hoping for.
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