It was a dark and stormy night. The Microsoft Windows phone funeral was in progress. The crowd was sparse and huddled under umbrellas. Standing in the dark, cold rain was a fresh but familiar face. The camera zooms in and we see BlackBerry KEYone. The KEYone lights a cigarette, the fire-hot cherry becoming a beacon of hope in the dark night of the niche phone graveyard. The KEYone grins, flicks the cigarette into the open grave and walks off into the darkness.
The BlackBerry KEYone recently hit the market and reviews are rolling in. While I’m struck with a tinge of nostalgia, I can’t bring myself to be too bullish on this phone. Also, it’s not totally a BlackBerry phone, but that is a bit complicated. Well, strike that. It’s pretty simple.
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The BlackBerry KEYone is powered by the BlackBerry back-end software, but is a device made by TCL under a licensing agreement with BlackBerry Limited. BlackBerry Limited used to be called Research In Motion RIMM +%. TCL basically owns everything except the software and the OS is Google GOOGL -0.50% Android. So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s just call it a BlackBerry. Otherwise we’re just arguing semantics.
I had a BlackBerry Tour 9630. I had to make friends with the guy at the cell phone store so he’d give me a fresh bag of replacement balls every couple months. I mean, the trackball in the middle would always get worn down. Get your mind out of the gutter. Then I upgraded to a BlackBerry Q20 SQC100-3, with a much easier to use trackpad. Then after that, well, my BlackBerry memory is a bit foggy. I’m pretty sure I reluctantly switched to a touch screen phone, I think it was a Motorola.
The latest BlackBerry phones before the KEYone, the PRIV and Donkey Kong Country, er, the DTEK60 have been discontinued for the most part. While one might think that the KEYone is a last gasp for BlackBerry, it’s not even close. According to a CNET report, the KEYone could just be the start of a BlackBerry revival.
There is some innovation with the way the physical keyboard on the KEYone is presented and functions, but I’m not here to review the phone or demonstrate how terrible my keyboard swiping movements are. When I use Swype typing it’s like watching an elephant finger paint. It is nice to see a physical keyboard exist on a phone again, one that no one besides perhaps myself and Barack Obama might switch back to.
Unlike the Windows Phone, BlackBerry (and by extension TCL) made a smart pivot when it came to software and hardware decisions. The KEYone is running the fresh-out-of-beta Google Android Nougat 7.1 operating system. Windows Phones ran Windows, naturally. So when Microsoft Satya Nadella says that Microsoft will stay in the mobile device game, I have to wonder if that means hardware only this time — like a Surface phone running Android — or are we going to get Windows 10 S jammed into a Lumia?
The key is in the hardware and the brand. BlackBerry couldn’t imagine a second coming without continuing to use Google Android, switching back to the physical keyboard from its touchscreen-only failures and not ever going back to the outdated BlackBerry front-end software. The reality is that BlackBerry users always knew something everyone else didn’t — that we were better and had phones that were not always the prettiest, but functional instead. Well, all phones were functional, ours just supported our unnatural attachment to mechanical keyboards.
Sure, the rumors circulating around a Surface Phone are titillating, but the BlackBerry KEYone is here now. We can only handle so many phones that aren’t Apple AAPL +1.65% iPhones. Sadly, the KeyOne will never dominate any part of the market and will remain niche. The good news is that with the power of TCL behind it, the KEYone most likely won’t be a loss leader and will still give us old school BlackBerry nerds something to hold on to if we so desire. Now if Windows would only release a Windows 3.1 phone things would really get interesting.
[“Source-forbes”]
