The Blackberry Priv- Blackberry’s Android First-born
December 29, 2015 • Blackberry • News
Due to a sheer number of Android users these days, it often crosses people’s minds if Blackberry could come up with a smartphone that actually uses the OS for their future phones. For those people who have been waiting for this, here comes the new Blackberry Priv. The Priv is a smartphone that explores the outside of BB10 by having Android OS, while still maintaining that unique Blackberry feel that some people like. Blackberry smartphone on Android? Why not?
BlackBerry Priv software
BlackBerry has, for the Priv, switched from its own BlackBerry OS to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop for release.
To take care of security, the BlackBery Priv comes with something called DTEK, which is like an app warning system app, designed to boost your privacy. The Priv also has BlackBerry's Hardware Root of Trust which is a unique manufacturing process that injects cryptographic keys into the hardware.
BlackBerry says: "Priv integrates seamlessly with Android for Work to provide secure separation between work and personal data and applications. The Personal Space lets you download apps and protects your personal privacy, while the Work Space lets the enterprise secure its corporate data."
Specs
The Blackberry Priv, boasts a 5’4-inch, 2k AMOLED display with a high pixel density of 540 pixels per inch. It possesses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset, Adreno 418 GPU, and runs on Android v5.1.1 Lollipop. Two varieties of the phone only differ on the CPU, with one having a Dual-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A57 and one with quad-core 1.44 GHz Cortex-A53. The phone has an internal memory of 32gb with 3gb RAM. It also has micro-SD card slot that supports 200 gb. It has a Li-Ion 3410 mAh battery that is comparable to most flagship phones of the Android market today.
Design
The Priv’s design is a 192-gram, curved-glass phone with a matching slide QWERTY Blackberry keyboard that might actually come in handy for those who do not want virtual keyboards taking up almost half of the screen to type e-mails and details. Well, it isn’t actually annoying when it does, but the slide keyboard of the Priv gives readability while providing typing convenience to people who are used to typing on physical keyboards.
Camera
The Priv has an 18mp rear sensor which does its job admirably, but not entirely perfect. Low-light performance is not really good, and the amount of time between tapping the capture button and saving varies, but it can be expected hopefully that Blackberry will address these software issues sometime later. The phone also has a 2mp front sensor that is comparable with other smartphones in the market. However, it is having troubles with low-light and when there is too much light around.
Conclusion
All these things make up the Blackberry Priv, the first Android phone Blackberry has to offer. Though it may not be the most perfect smartphone to compete with flagships of giants such as Samsung, Apple and LG, it certainly is a good choice if you want a reliable, durable and quality phone coupled with that uniquely Blackberry feel if you’re tired of the usual Android experience you get from smartphones these days.