Blackberry KEY2 LE (KEY2 Lite)

The BlackBerry KEY2 wasn't a sharp shooter (pun intended) by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the KEY2 LE which comes with inferior cameras struggles to capture tasteful images either. On paper, the handset ships with two rear-facing cameras, comprising a pair of 13MP and 5MP sensors with f/2.2 and f/2.4 aperture respectively. For selfies, you'll be smiling into an 8MP front shooter.On the face of it, the KEY2 LE shoots decent pictures with vibrant colours and good dynamic range. To me, the smartphone has a great Instagram camera. However, upon zooming in, I noticed that the smartphone struggled to retain details and even at a 20 percent crop, I started noticing grains and noise pop up in the images. That's quite disappointing as it leaves no room for photographers to pick and choose a part of the image to share. What's more, the smartphone scrambles to retain details in the shadows too and therefore, any picture I took with the HDR mode enabled felt as if I'd slapped an ND filter on the device. In layman's terms, shadows appeared darker than they should and the details were absolutely nowhere to be seen.And it doesn't end there. The smartphone's cameras take their sweet time to focus on a subject, especially in situations where you'd want to leverage the portrait mode. Lest I forget, the blur effect isn't as convincing as what you might get with some other smartphones either. As for lowlight, well, the story remains unchanged. While the images look good on the handset's display, you'll notice a ton of smoothening and noise upon zooming in. Thankfully, there's light at the end of the tunnel for the KEY2 LE. The selfie camera on the device clicks decent pictures with good details under ideal lighting scenarios. Unfortunately, you won't be able to click portrait selfies as the smartphone doesn't support it. However, selfies taken in a pub at night aren't that bad, thanks to the presence of a screen-flash functionality.

The ‘mini' or ‘light' version of a smartphone often comes with less powerful innards and the KEY2 LE is no exception to this. The smartphone is backed by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 636 processor as opposed to the Snapdragon 660 chip which powered the KEY2. Moreover, BlackBerry has taken a chunk from the KEY2 LE's memory too, as the device comes with just 4GB of RAM (vs 6GB on the pricier sibling). Consequently, the KEY2 LE isn't going to set the benchmarks on fire with its performance, but that's okay because the handset wasn't intended to run PUBG on the highest possible settings in the first place. You should've bought the OnePlus 6 (review) for that.For the most part, buyers who opt for the KEY2 LE will use the phone to send e-mails, browse the web and for messaging. To that extent, the smartphone is more than capable of handling its own and I didn't come across any lags or stutters whilst navigating through the system UI. Opening CPU intensive apps which require a lot of resources do take a while (Snapchat and Chrome), but the wait is most definitively not going to kill you. Now, if you absolutely must, then you can play games on the device too. Unfortunately, most games might not play well with the handset's unique aspect ratio. For instance, I couldn't get past the loading screen on titles like PUBG and Dead Trigger 2, though casual games like Clash Royale worked just fine on the device. As for software, the smartphone runs Android Oreo v8.1 with a proprietary skin on top. The software experience is identical to what you would get with the KEY2 and therefore, I won't go into too much depth here. That said, the skin comes bundled with some excellent features which deserve a special mention. For starters, I was a fan of BlackBerry's pop-up widgets, which allow users to quickly launch a widget of a compatible application by swiping up on the app's icon.I loved the BlackBerry Hub feature too and it's every bit as awesome as people would tell you. The hub aggregates messages from all the different applications in one place, thereby saving you the trouble of having to jump from one app to the other. Lastly, if you're paranoid about your privacy, then you will be able to keep your anxiety at bay with the DTEK app, which lets you turn off select permissions for individual applications installed on your device. Then, there's the Privacy Shade feature which ensures only a part of the screen is visible, thereby allowing users to view sensitive documents and media in public places. All in all, the software onboard the BlackBerry KEY2 LE lives up to its promises and offers buyers a near-stock experience with oodles of security. The BlackBerry KEY2 LE is equipped with a 3,000mAh battery which easily lasted me a day on heavy usage. Be it the low-res panel or the battery-efficient processor, I was consistently getting over 4.5 hours of screen on time with the device, which is excellent.

Pros: Physical keyboard Long-lasting battery lifeExcellent security featuresCons: Sub-par camerasScaling issues in some apps and gamesAverage performance Photos by Raj Rout