BlackBerry Key2 vs iPhone: Keyboard Face-Off

 

Although physical keyboards have disappeared from smartphones, this has not stopped TCL from developing BlackBerry phones to further spread the legacy.
There is a small contingent of users who prefer traditional writing on touchscreens. For them, the BlackBerry Touche2 (or BlackBerry KEYONE last year) has recently become the only way to get that experience in a modern device.
But to do that, you have to give up a few things that other phones offer, namely a widescreen, a processor frontline, face recognition, and excellent photography.
This raises the question: Keyboard Touche2 justifies the choice in places like the iPhone X, Google Pixel 2 or Samsung Galaxy S9? To find out, I asked some colleagues to try the phone and weigh it.
How to spend years of digital input with miniature buttons? Do the additional benefits of Key2, such as the touchpad features and programmable keyboard shortcuts, make the offer easier? That's what my colleagues said.

It takes time to get used to it

We compare the experience of typing on Touche2 with an iPhone 8 Plus and recorded our typing speed at 10FastFingers.com. No wonder that all participants were much faster with the iPhone.

Is it really because the iPhone's keyboard is better, or just because our thumbs are more used now? Maybe a combination of both, though our familiarity with touchscreens now definitely plays an important role. Using Touche2, senior editor guide Henry Casey and Paul Wagenseil editor Tom have recorded 13 words per minute in FastFingers 10 minutes. In comparison, Casey reached 47 words per minute on the iPhone, and Wagenseil reached 20 words per minute.

The car's cable already had a BlackBerry Bold, a phone that remembers the emotions that many consider the best BlackBerry. Not without reason, says Gareth Hurn, global manager of devices for BlackBerry Mobile, the same keyboard. He said he and his team got advice on developing Touche2.
"I really liked the old BlackBerry keyboards," Wagenseil said. "You can type that fast, but I miss it, but [Key2] is not very good."
Bold's main lines were ergonomically curved, and their keycaps were more adorned and separated. The rows of Key2 are straight, which of course does not follow the movement of your thumbs. Also, because the keys are against each other, it's not so easy to see what Casey repeated when he put his hands on Touche2.
"The keys are too close," said Casey defeated. "However, I have to say that the slanted keys [Touche2] are a clever solution to a big problem because if they were flat, it would be even harder to learn."

With repeated attempts, the editor Mark Spoonauer was about to reproduce his record of 37 words per minute on the iPhone with Touche2, where he reached a maximum of 32 words per minute. Spoonauer, however, still responded to Wagenseil's feelings and said he could not write with greater precision in her old BlackBerry Curve.



Additional features, however, are the winners


Therefore, the keyboard of the latest BlackBerry cannot be compared with any of the best of the brand. However, he has party items that Bold and Curve could never play.

On one side there is a fingerprint sensor directly on the space bar. And thanks to Key2's new key combination, users can program up to 52 shortcuts for specific applications and services in conjunction with long or short keys on the device letters. This will save you time when performing multiple tasks that would otherwise be used to return to the Home screen or browse recently used applications.

But what really appealed to our panel is the ability of the keyboard to act as a touchpad, depending on the content of the screen. This feature allows you to scroll through websites in Chrome without hiding content. This can be done on a screen with an on-screen keyboard. It's a weird feeling at first, like returning to a physical keyboard, even though anyone who tried it saw the value immediately.

"That means the keyboard is not useless if you do not write," Casey said. "They are trying to improve the usability of the keyboard.


There is probably no going back

This brings us back to the original question: is the Key2 keyboard sufficiently satisfying to capture the old BlackBerry fans of today's top mobile phone manufacturers? For now, you can probably guess that the answer is not affirmative.
Even leaving out all users who choose Key2 on these other devices with faster processors, vivid screens, and better cameras, the keyboard does not even live up to the best Blackberry job. ten years ago. But what if it were?
"Maybe I'll think about it," Wagenseil said, "especially if they could still have a big screen with Bold's keyboard."
Spoonauer was less optimistic.
"The boat has sailed," he said. "I feel like you have that nostalgic feeling when you start writing, but it's shocking to have to learn almost new, but I can see it's there always has an attraction.

It is possible for TCL to correctly identify the type of keyboard that BlackBerry fans are looking for on their devices if the name of the device is no longer correct. You could argue that Key2 is the smartest phone that ever had the brand name, or that its keyboard is a little better than KeyOne. Until TCL can provide an interface as bold and precise as it was 10 years ago, none of this will matter. And if he does, how many fans will wait patiently?