The BlackBerry KEYone, which goes on sale in its home country of Canada today, is a weird device.
But it’s weird not because it wasn’t designed in-house, and instead was handled by partner TCL; it’s weird because it’s strangely successful at pulling off an odd balancing act of combining modern functionality with the same kind of retro appeal Fujifilm has managed to infuse throughout their mirrorless camera lineup, with nostalgia for the earliest days of the smartphone, which are apparently far enough away that we can feel genuine nostalgia for them.Up until relatively recently, BlackBerry’s attempts to hold on to its hardware keyboard heritage felt like grasping at a past that was sadly and irreversibly fading. Sure, you’d get some fans among grey-haired C-Level execs who find the transition to touchscreen keyboards impossible to come to (ahem) grips with. But by and large, the world have moved on – to bigger screens, multitouch and a world of adaptable interfaces.
But only a few years after BlackBerry’s BB10 experiment fell flat, the KEYone, with its solid, relatively untouched version of Android, and with its trademark hard plastic keys, feels like an old friend you’re glad decided to pay a visit. It probably has a lot to do with Android’s own recent improvements (the KEYone is running Nougat, which is the most recent public release), but it’s also a thoughtful coming of age that resists the urge to throw out the BlackBerry legacy, but also doesn’t cling to closely to the company’s hardware history.
The KEYone has a good camera, for instance, which has never been something the BlackBerry brand was known for. It’s using the same sensor as the Google Pixel, though its software means the KEYone still isn’t among the very top of top...
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