- [MrMobile] The new BlackBerry Motion does away
with the BlackBerry KEYone's best feature.
I can't claim credit for that sentence,
it's a headline from Digital Trends.
But it's so good, I just had to borrow it.
Because it seems to me that today, more than ever,
taking a keyboard off of a BlackBerry makes it
just another smart phone.
Mostly, anyway.
I'm MrMobile, and this is not a review.
It's a rare, head-to-head comparison.
A tale of two BlackBerries.
(upbeat music)
Blackberry fans, I know you're already down to the comments
rattling off reasons I'm wrong, so let me say this:
the Motion certainly has stuff going for it
if you've already decided a BlackBerry
is what you're buying.
It preserves much of the character of the KEYone,
soft to the touch with a rubberized backplate
bracketed by metal accents.
That'll come as welcome news to anyone tired
of the glass sandwiches dominating phone design these days.
Around front, a big 'ol physical home button
stamped with a BlackBerry logo,
and yes, the multi-colored notification LED
with its signature red spark.
This is not another case of a hasty rebadge,
like the old DTEK line.
Aside from being a little too light for my taste,
the Motion is very much a BlackBerry.
It's also, in some ways, a better Berry.
Without a big porous keyboard, the Motion repels
dust and water well enough to earn it an IP67
Ingress Protection rating.
And it packs a 14% larger battery than the KEYone.
That means it keeps pace with the insane endurance
of that earlier phone, despite the bigger display.
Recently, on a moderately busy 12-hour day,
it was trending toward six hours of screen-on time
by the time I got done with dinner.
It also seems a bit speedier than the KEYone,
thought to be fair that's not saying much.
Neither of these will feel particularly fast,
if you've used phones from Motorola, OnePlus, or HTC.
The Motion also has new features in tow that,
as yet anyway, haven't trickled down to its smaller sibling.
The bigger fingerprint sensor means you can swipe
the home button to drop the notification shade.
In the camera, tapping that fingerprint sensor
will snap a photo and send it directly
to the BlackBerry Locker, bypassing the gallery
so only you can see it.
Press the Convenience Key on the side
and you now have three options for quick shortcuts,
not just one.
Otherwise, everything's about the same - from the DTEK
security suite, to the secure boot process,
to that rather cool privacy shade.
Unfortunately, BlackBerry still refuses to follow the laws
of common decency, so the convenience key
is where you'd expect the power button to be.
So get used to fumbling around a lot when you try
to lock the phone.
That's fun.
Keep in mind the class of device we're talking about here.
The KEYone launched at about $550, and while the Motion
hasn't come to the States yet, there are indications
BlackBerry wants to make the Motion a little more affordable
than the KEYone actually.
So there are compromises, there's an HD LCD
with a lot of bezel, and not a lot of color.
That display is protected by Dragontrail glass,
which is fine but its durability coating
holds onto fingerprints like you wouldn't believe.
The spec sheet is almost identical to the KEYone's,
which is adequate, but old.
It's certainly not pushing the envelope in any way
but battery size.
And the camera is not great.
BlackBerry wouldn't tell me which sensor it's using here,
which would be fine unless you remember how eager
the company was to boast about using the same sensor
as the Google Pixel for the KEYone.
That suggests that the Motion packs a less expensive
component and my testing bares that out.
The Motion tends to kick out softer shots.
I have more trouble focusing on specific subjects
than I do with the KEYone.
And in general, the pictures felt very soft.
Now other times the Motion did actually manage
the better photos, so it's not worthless by any means.
And the cameras did equally well at capturing
color in 4k video.
But both also suffered from the lack
of electronic stabilization at that resolution.
Finally, what's it actually like to trade in
that tactile thumbboard for yet another pane of glass?
Well, the software has been brought over
from the BB10 platform, so if you're coming
from an old Z10 or Z30 you'll probably like it.
I've always enjoyed how BlackBerry lets you
flick up on those keys to autocomplete,
and it's got other cool quirks
like that clipboard viewer, which is nice.
But of course you can't feel out the buttons
like you can on the KEYone
and that cheap haptic vibration motor makes it feel
mushy and slow, and if you decide to do some dictating
well the BlackBerry keyboard is much slower
and a little bit less accurate than Gboards.
If you're thinking I sound like a hardcore KEYone fanboy
who'd never consider the Motion, you're right.
I think most of the reason we're still seeing
new BlackBerries in 2017 is because
the company took a risk.
It leaned into this antiquated idea
of a physical keyboard, and it paid off.
The Motion eliminates that keyboard
and in so doing, it wipes out what I think
is the single most compelling feature
about the modern BlackBerry.
That being said, I still remember some commentors
on my KEYone review saying they loved the long battery life
and security features of that phone, but had no need
for physical buttons.
So if you're one of those folks or you find value
in all the features I tend to ignore
like the BlackBerry Hub, and Productivity Tab,
the Motion might be great for you.
And I'm sure it'll do well in the enterprise market
where corporate customers might buy it in bulk.
For everyone else looking for the next exciting thing
from BlackBerry, seems to me we're gonna have
to keep looking.
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Until next time folks, thanks for watching.
Please subscribe, and stay mobile my friends.