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ONNOVEMBER 5 "BLACKBERRY KEY2 LE REVIEW | TRUSTED REVIEWS" BlackBerry Key2 LE Review | Trusted Reviews What is the BlackBerry Key2 LE? With its defiantly physical keyboard and chunky metal frame, the BlackBerry Key2 stood out from the crowd to an extent that very few modern Android phones manage. Whether that quirky appeal was worthy of a £600 price tag at launch was another matter. All of which makes the BlackBerry Key2 LE a more interesting proposition than it might initially seem. To all practical intents and purposes, it’s a BlackBerry Key2 with a significantly lower price and none of the impractical heft.
That’s the positive angle you could take with the BlackBerry Key2 LE. The flip side is that it remains a curious anachronism, an awkward hybrid of old and that feels like it came straight from the dusty corner of an early noughties boardroom. Both of these stances are wholly justifiable, which just goes to show how niche and polarising the once mighty BlackBerry concept has become. To its target audience, then, the question ‘is the BlackBerry Key2 LE any good?
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’ should be less relevant than ‘should you take your BlackBerry full-fat or half-fat?’ The LE makes a fairly strong case for the latter. BlackBerry Key2 LE – Price and release date The Key2 LE retails for £349/$399 for the 32GB version and £399/$449 for the 64GB option. It’s available to buy now. BlackBerry Key2 LE – Design The BlackBerry Key2 LE looks nigh-on identical to the full-fat BlackBerry Key2 but it’s made of cheaper stuff.
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It’s got the same chunky, straight-edged design with a grippy rubberised back, however, the main material here is polycarbonate (that’s plastic to you and I), rather than metal. That’s not to denigrate the move to humbler materials. The Key2 LE is 12 grams lighter than its big brother and it’s fractionally slimmer and shorter too. The difference isn’t massive by any means but as we criticised the Key2 for being a little on the unwieldy side, any reduction is welcome.
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The move to plastic makes the Key2 LE warmer and more inviting to the touch, especially in conjunction with that rubberised rear panel. It’s another dated element but there’s no denying its practical function, nor the blissful lack of visible fingerprints when you handle it. This use of plastic has also enabled BlackBerry to offer the Key2 LE in some rather eye-catching colours. The soft gold colour of our test model isn’t particularly to my taste, nor is it hideously garish (for a more eye-catching finish, the red-on-black model seen in our initial hands-on might fit the bill).
Most importantly, it doesn’t feel too cheap, with virtually no creaking or flexing. As has been the case with every BlackBerry device from the post-iPhone era, the one feature that defines the BlackBerry Key2 LE will divide opinion. Few people still prefer typing with a physical keyboard these days but some still do and if that’s you, then you need to ask yourself whether you’re still willing to sacrifice significant screen space to facilitate your preference.
To your average smartphone user, the keyboard here will feel like a weird vestigial organ, leaching precious viewing space. Literally, every other smartphone manufacturer is doing precisely the opposite right now, shaving off every possible millimetre of non-screen real-estate. Overall, the keyboard itself is actually slightly smaller than the Key2’s but it’s still 10% bigger than those on the KeyOne.
Even to a committed software keyboard user, it’s very pleasant to type on, once you’ve jogged the part of your muscle memory that used to engage with such tactile things (age permitting). BlackBerry has put that permanent keyboard to full use with a useful speed key that lets you jump into apps when it’s combined with the rest of keyboard. Meanwhile, the LE’s fingerprint sensor is stashed into the space bar and it’s both fast and reliable.
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