BlackBerry Priv review

The BlackBerry Priv is a real beast of a smartphone. It’s huge, heavy, and is packed with so many extra features that BlackBerry quite literally couldn’t fit them all on, instead choosing to hide its infamous physical keyboard underneath the main display. Push up from the bottom of the phone and the screen slides upwards, revealing a full QWERTY keyboard that also doubles up as a touch-sensitive track pad for scrolling and fine cursor control.

It’s an elegant solution to something BlackBerry seems to have been struggling with for years, as it’s never quite reconciled how to combine its trademark keyboard with a large main display. It had a pretty good go with the super wide BlackBerry Passport earlier in the year, but that was so unwieldy that you could barely hold it in one hand. The Priv, on the other hand, is a far neater blend of both technologies and is arguably better than anything BlackBerry has done before.

It might all be too little, too late, though, as BlackBerry’s decision to jump ship to Android Lollipop as opposed to labouring on with its own BlackBerry OS means there’s now very little to distinguish the Priv from the rest of Android’s top flagships. It still comes with some dedicated BlackBerry apps, such as BlackBerry Hub, which is a one-stop shop for all your various communication and social media channels, and DTEK, BlackBerry’s privacy dashboard, but otherwise it’s a much more level playing field – for more on Blackberry’s Android plans read Know Your Mobile.

Display

That hasn’t stopped BlackBerry from going all out with the Priv, though, as it still has everything it needs to compete with today’s top-end competition. The best example of this is the 5.4in curved AMOLED display, which slopes round the side of the phone to the rubbery soft touch rear to create a near-seamless circular edge, much like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 Edge and S6 Edge+.

With a 2,560x,1440 resolution, the Priv’s 540ppi pixel density is actually higher than the S6 Edge+, giving everything a razor-sharp finish to help it look smart and professional. Colour accuracy is also superb, as its AMOLED panel covers the full 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, delivering bright, punchy colours that really jump off the screen. With a perfect 0.00cd/m2 black level, text really stands out against light backgrounds, and a contrast ratio of 41,987:1 captures every shade of shadow detail in between. The Priv’s max screen brightness only extends to 344.46cd/m2, but this is pretty typical of AMOLED displays and is still just about enough to use outside without any great difficulty.

BlackBerry’s also managed to make much better use of the curved screen than Samsung’s S6 Edge and S6 Edge+, as its Productivity tab menu is full of quick access shortcuts that make it a far more practical addition to the phone than Samsung’s Edge screen. Swiping the translucent tab on the curve, presents a quick overview of your unread emails, calendar appointments, tasks, any missed calls and favourite contacts. It can also be configured to appear on both the right and left hand side of the screen, with varying degrees of thickness and at any height, making it much easier to use than Samsung’s quick contact menu.

^ BlackBerry’s Productivity tab is a lot more useful than Samsung’s Edge screen, as you can look at your calendar, contacts, tasks, emails and open each individual app with a simple swipe and tap

During everyday use, though, the curve can be a bit distracting, as it’s very prone to reflections and catching the light. This can make reading web pages a little tricky, as the edge of the page doesn’t extend all the way round the curve. Instead, it just stops short of the curve, making it a prime target for overhead light reflections.

Keyboard

The screen needs a pretty firm push to slide up and down, but at least the metal rim round the edge provides a firm starting point if your thumb isn’t already on the screen. The keyboard itself feels very cramped, and it’s not particularly easy to type on if you have long nails. Some of the keys feel looser than others, and while they are larger and wider than previous BlackBerry handset keyboards, I still struggled to type more than a few sentences without making typos. I was never a BlackBerry user, admittedly, so anyone who has resisted making the switch to a touchscreen-only device might find themselves right at home. The raised keys feel surprisingly tactile and the phone is balanced to make it comfy to type on, without feeling top-heavy. It’s also backlit, making it easier to type in the dark.

The main benefit is that using the physical keyboard leaves you with a lot more screen real estate. The lack of an onscreen keyboard lets you see much more of your message thread or word document while still being able to type and edit. The Priv still has an onscreen keyboard, of course, for when the physical keyboard is hidden away, but it’s nice to have the option. The physical keyboard also doubles up as a touchpad for scrolling down web pages, but the keys can make it feel slightly less responsive than using your own thumb.

Another handy keyboard feature is the ability to assign shortcuts to every single key, whether it’s to open an app, speed dial a particular contact or send a message to someone. To assign a shortcut, simply hold down the key in question and pick your shortcut, so you could have C for Camera, or T for Twitter, for example. Then, all you need to do is long-press that particular key and the shortcut will activate in little more than a second, making it much easier to jump between apps without returning to the home screen.

Ironically, though, it’s BlackBerry’s virtual onscreen keyboard that really makes typing quicker and easier, as its smart word suggestion software actually suggests words based on the letter you’ll type next, allowing you to swipe upwards on the screen to automatically paste it in. It learns as you type, too, so it’s more likely to suggest other words next which fit your intended sentence, allowing you to rattle off sentences much faster than typing them out manually. The physical keyboard still offers this to some extent, but you’re only limited to three words (which can be added by swiping up on the left, right and centre of the keyboard), as opposed to four or five.

In my eyes, this rather negates having the physical keyboard in the first place, and I found I very rarely used it during every day use. After all, when onscreen keyboards are so good these days, the need for a physical keyboard seems rather unnecessary, especially when the onscreen keys are bigger and easier to press than their physical counterparts. Admittedly, the shortcuts have a lot of potential, particularly if you like to keep your home screen nice and tidy, but otherwise it’s not a particularly huge draw for me.

Security

Considering BlackBerry’s raison d’être is security, it seems odd to me that there isn’t a fingerprint sensor here. The Priv does offer several ways to lock your phone, including a picture password, but when a lot of high-end Android phones are now moving towards including fingerprint sensors, it seems strange that BlackBerry hasn’t followed suit.

BlackBerry’s DTEK app was also a little disappointing. This one-stop security service app does several things right, such as telling you how to improve your phone’s overall security and giving you the option to encrypt your data, but its app overview isn’t quite as extensive as I would have hoped. This lets you know exactly what data your apps have access to and how many times it’s accessed those bits of data.

^ DTEK’s app window will show you what information has been accessed by your apps, but short of uninstalling it, there’s not a lot you can do to stop it accessing it again

However, rather than giving you the option to alter individual app permissions, so you can keep your personal info under tight lock and key, the only options are to forcibly stop the app, uninstall it, or set up an alert for when that app tries to access something you think it shouldn’t, such as Dropbox attempting to use your microphone. This doesn’t strike me as being particularly useful, but it should be fixed once the Priv gets an Android 6.0 Marshmallow update, which BlackBerry promised would be coming in the New Year.

Performance

The only area where it feels like BlackBerry’s cut corners is the underlying chipset. It might have 3GB of RAM, but the hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor lags behind other 2015 flagships, as most tend to use the faster, octa-core Snapdragon 810. It’s not even quite as fast as other 808-based smartphones either, as its GeekBench 3 scores of 1,155 in the single core test and 3,433 in the multicore test are just behind the Moto X Style’s respective scores of 1,243 and 3,579, and that only costs £400 SIM-free as opposed to the Priv’s £560. The S6 Edge is faster still, trumping the Priv by more than double in the multicore test alone. The Priv is still pretty quick in everyday use, but it’s not as fast as it should be given the price.

The Priv’s graphics performance was also decidedly underwhelming for such an expensive handset, although this is admittedly less important considering its enterprise credentials. Still, those hoping to get in a quick game between meetings or on the commute home might be disappointed, as its offscreen Manhattan test score only equated to 936 frames (or 15fps) in GFX Bench GL, making demanding games like Hearthstone a tad jerky at times. It was still smooth enough to play when I tried a game for myself, but it’s not quite as smooth as it could be. Other games such as Threes! and Alphabear ran perfectly fine, though.

Thankfully, its Peacekeeper score of 1,390 was much more promising, as this actually puts it ahead of the S6 Edge and just in front of the Sony Xperia Z3+. As a result, web browsing was very smooth indeed. Scrolling through pages with videos, adverts and lots of images produced very few signs of stutter on the whole, and pinch-zooming was very slick and responsive.

Battery Life

With a 3,410mAh battery, the Priv has plenty of staying-power, but I must admit I was a little underwhelmed by its performance in our continuous video playback test. With the screen set to 170cd/m2, the Priv lasted just 11h 11m, which isn’t particularly great considering the size of the battery.

The S6 Edge, for instance, has a smaller 2,600mAh battery, but lasted over 15 and a half hours under the same conditions. However, it’s still more enough to get you through the day, and its quick charge support should make it easy to top-up if you get caught short. One thing you don’t have to worry about is storage, as the Priv comes with 32GB as standard but supports microSD cards up to a whopping 2TB.

Camera

BlackBerry has chosen an 18-megapixel sensor for the Priv’s rear camera, which comes with a Schneider Kreuznach lens, optical image stabilisation and phase-detect auto-focus. It protrudes out of the back of the phone, no doubt because there’s less space due to the sliding screen, but it does mean the phone won’t sit completely flush if you lie it down on a table. However, BlackBerry assured me that its machined stainless steel ring is more than up to the task of protecting the lens, so hopefully it won’t get too scratched further down the line.

It would be a shame if it did, as the quality of the Priv’s photos was excellent. Outdoors, there was lots of contrast on show without making the picture look overly dark, and colours were bright and natural. I could see some very small signs of slightly excessive image processing, but on the whole, images looked pleasingly neutral, and enabling HDR mode only improved things further. When I compared the Priv’s shots with those I took on the S6 Edge at the same time, for instance, the Priv captured a lot more overcast cloud detail and images were generally brighter and less dingy.

^ The sky was a little overexposed here, but the Priv still captured lots of detail, contrast and bright, accurate colours despite the overcast weather

^ Enabling HDR fixed this almost immediately, capturing plenty of cloud detail without making the rest of the image appear too unnatural

The S6 Edge performed better indoors, though, as the Priv’s low light photos were noticeably grainier and less vivid, even when our external lamp was turned on. The Priv’s indoor photos also didn’t have quite as much contrast, so darker areas lost a lot of detail. Its dual LED flash also struggled to reconcile the leaves and stems on our flowers, making them look almost blurred against the white background.

^ Indoors, there was a lack of contrast and lot more noise and grain, but it’s still a pretty decent image for indoor shooting

Conclusion

The only real problem with the Priv is its extortionate price. At £560 SIM free or £49-per-month on contract, the Priv is one of the most expensive phones currently available, topping both the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and iPhone 6S. That’s a lot to pay when it isn’t quite the complete package you’d expect from a top-end smartphone, but that’s not to say the Priv doesn’t earn its stripes in other areas.

Its display is excellent, it has a great camera, and its decision to add Android on top of a physical keyboard will no doubt be a huge draw for former BlackBerry users who have been side-lined by a lack of decent apps. I’d expect faster performance at this price, as well as maybe a fingerprint sensor for added convenience, but the Priv is still a pretty decent smartphone regardless. However, if you’re not fussed about the keyboard, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge is a much better buy.