The blackberry dtek 50 is the second andriod gadget from the blackberry family after last year’s blackberry priv. It’s a 5.2-inch 1080p display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 13-megapixel camera. It has 16GB of built-in storage, but thankfully that’s expandable with a microSD card. The highlight about this hardware is the speaker setup with a front-facing speakers on both the front and back of the device. On the software side, things remain as they were on the Priv, only less buggy and a little more refined.
In this case it’s powered with andriod Marshmallow with some light customizations here and there, plus BlackBerry’s own suite of apps and software tweaks. Pop-up widgets are an example of a neat BlackBerry thing. They let you flick up on a home screen icon to see that app’s widget at a glance instead of permanently wasting crucial space on your home screen and leaving them there for the world to see. Then there’s BlackBerry Hub, which consolidates everything from your communication apps email, text, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, etc into one place. It can be useful if you take the time to set it up and then disable other app notifications to prevent duplicates. Truthfully, security is really the only worthwhile selling point here.
Priced at Shs900,000 this phone is claimed to be the “most secure smartphone in the world,”.
BlackBerry says the DTEK50 contains the same under-the-hood improvements as the Priv, like a “hardware root of trust” that prevents anyone from tampering with the device’s insides and full disk encryption enabled by default.
Blackberry dtek50
GOOD
• Monthly security updates
• Near-stock Android software
• Nice display and speakers
BAD
• Unimpressive performance
• Weak camera
• Poor battery life