back to article BlackBerry KEY2 LE: Cheaper QWERTY, but not for what's inside

Out of thousands of smartphone vendors, TCL's BlackBerry Mobile unit represents one of a tiny handful targeting enterprise users. But its two QWERTY models to date have been priced at a premium, north of £500. Unveiled at IFA this week, budget model the KEY2 LE cuts costs in a bid to attract the corporate bulk buyers. The …

  1. Captain Scarlet
    Thumb Down

    Corporate Buyers

    Nah, the brand doesn't have that sort of power anymore.

    If you can get close to a price of an iphone then I don;t think it will attract corpoate Buyers.

    I do like a physical keyboard on a phone but under £200 please.

  2. TheRealRoland

    My guess, this is a phone for corporate bulk buyers. With enough scale that price will go down anyways. Solid, secure Blackberry, not rootable, etc. - they could be on to something.

  3. James 51

    If I hadn't got a Gemini for my birthday the key two would be top of my list. As it is, not the same need now.

  4. Orv Silver badge

    Is a full touchscreen actually more expensive than a physical keyboard, now? I would have expected it to be cheaper to make it just one big screen. Fewer components, less wiring, less finicky assembly. Am I missing something?

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Am I missing something?

      I think the physical keyboard on the more expensive model is like a laptop touch pad as well as separate real clicky buttons. Which sounds more expensive than an ordinary keyboard or a touch screen.

      The eReaders would benefit from a home, menu, back, and pair of page turn buttons. The old Sony PRS350 is nice. Sadly most ereaders save money (very little as eink screens are madly expensive) by only having a power button.

      The three or four Android touch areas would be better as six physical buttons, plus the two or three on side. Having to use a touch area on LCD is STUPID for the Camera. My older Android phone could use a button on the side for "take" and the volume for zoom. The newer designs are designed to be shaken or dropped when taking a photo.

      I blame Steve Jobs, Jony Ives, Google and Sinofsky & Co for all our GUI ills.

  5. KSM-AZ
    Thumb Up

    First thing with the priv was to turn off he "hot" kb. Problem is with a phy kb, you slide fingers because you type by 'feel'. When 'feel' becomes a gesture. . . Grrr!

    I thought that feature rather stoopid!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A word of caution regarding TCL

    TCL has a history of pushing advertising SDKs and embedding Facebook's Graph API into system apps after firmware upgrades.

    There are plenty of warnings about this on the Android developer sites.

    Buyer beware!

    1. Mage Silver badge

      Re: A word of caution regarding TCL

      Only marginally more creepy than Google's use of Android, sources?

      There are firmware updates? ^_^

  7. Morten Bjoernsvik

    BT keyboard anyone

    If they had only increased the screen to do super wide mode instead of that tiny keyboard. I much rather go along with an $25 BT keyboard. This is only for Blackberry nostalgics or people writing a lot on their mobile devices for with there are lots of far better options. (like putting a LTE card in your laptop)

    1. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: BT keyboard anyone

      Laptops are considerably less portable than a mobile phone...

  8. Cartimand

    Screen too small?

    I still happily use my Blackberry Priv, with the sliding screen that exposes the QWERTY keyboard, being my favourite feature (and irrisistible to fiddle with). Whilst a physical keyboard is great, above all, I like a big screen and the KEY2s lose an inch, due to the permanently exposed keyboard.

    Think I'll stick with the Priv for now.

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