After over a week with the BlackBerry Priv, I’m still not entirely convinced it’s real. I was joking when I tweeted that it felt like a phone from an alternate universe, but just barely. If you told me the Priv was a prop from the set of a 2005-era science fiction movie, some decade-old concept for what the future of BlackBerry would be, I’d probably believe you. That’s a testament to the level of consistency BlackBerry has achieved with the Priv: no matter what else it is, at its core it’s still a BlackBerry.

That means it’s complex –sometimes needlessly so– and also expensive, disadvantages that have in the past been offset by the BlackBerry’s reputation as a productivity powerhouse. In 2005, if you wanted to get things done on the go, you bought a BlackBerry (in fact, the company’s BB 7520 was my first smartphone). But it’s 2015. The competition has grown up, and now almost every iPhone or Android smartphone can be pressed into service as an office assistant, while the new crop of Windows Phones can transform into fully-fledged desktop computers given the right hardware. People no longer need a BlackBerry to get things done.

It’s this new climate the BlackBerry Priv was designed to tackle. By trading the placid consistency of the BlackBerry OS for the vibrant ecosystem of Android and tossing in a physical keyboard, BlackBerry hopes to make itself appealing to a new class of prosumer: one who doesn’t mind paying a little extra for some “priv”ilege and “priv”acy. The result is a surprisingly good smartphone, but one that needs some big changes before it can be called a success.

Video Review · Hardware & Keyboard · Software · Camera · Performance Pros/Cons · Pricing/Availability · Conclusion BlackBerry Priv Review Video Index Hardware & Keyboard Portrait-oriented sliders are rare enough that when one shows up on the scene it generally makes a splash – but the BlackBerry Priv makes an impression even before you slide it open. Its Quad HD P-OLED display is spacious at 5.4″ and absolutely gorgeous under the Gorilla Glass 4 lens, which curves gently at the edges to meet the Priv’s rounded sides. The cover glass stops short of the phone’s bottom lip to make room for a loud and clear front-firing speaker whose grille takes up the entire width of the device. Up top, sharing space with the earpiece is the BlackBerry brand name, which is flanked by one of the company’s oldest trademarks: a bright notification LED that flashes a brilliant red by default. The Priv’s posterior doesn’t impress quite as much. While the glass weave material is attractive in a rugged sort of way, it suffers from a startling amount of give when pressed. The effect is not unlike the “trampoline” problem faced by some Nexus 9 tablets: even a light press on the Priv’s spine sends the material dipping into a seemingly large air pocket beneath. It goes without saying that that’s not the sort of fit and finish we expect from a $700 smartphone, especially when manufacturers like OnePlus are delivering top-notch build quality for a third the price of the Priv. On the plus side, the back cover features probably the grippiest soft-touch coating we’ve ever come across. While that means it picks up more than its share of dust and fuzz, it also makes the Priv very easy to keep a grip on when you slide its screen out of the way to reveal its most distinctive feature. If you’re coming from another BlackBerry, you’ll probably be a little let down by the Priv’s QWERTY thumbpad. While the company deserves serious credit for managing to fit such an intricate assembly into a chassis this thin, the lack of space means the keys don’t offer the travel or mechanical feedback BlackBerrys have come to be known for. They’re not as clicky as those on the Classic, and they’re not as spacious as those on the Passport. But this is one of those areas where BlackBerry’s sub-1% market share might work to its advantage. A large portion of the Priv’s potential audience, those Android and iOS users who haven’t laid thumbs on a “crackberry” in years, will probably find a lot to like in the Priv’s contoured clackers. That includes us: after about a week of practice, we’re now able to bang out more words per minute at higher accuracy with the Priv’s physical keyboard (265 CPM / 53 WPM) than its software one (239 CPM / 48 WPM). That’s not a strike against BlackBerry’s virtual keyboard, by the way: it’s just as good as ever, with excellent predictive text that lets you swipe directly on the keys to auto-complete. But we usually only break out the VKB when we need to use the Priv one-handed. The rest of the time we prefer the physical keyboard. (If you’re reading this on your Priv and want to try the typing test yourself, here’s the one we used.) Much of that has to do with the fact that the Priv’s thumbpad is good for much more than typing. Aping one of the most innovative features of the aforementioned Passport, BlackBerry has used equal parts engineering and magic hackery to convert the Priv’s keyboard into one big trackpad. That means you can place the cursor exactly where you want it just by moving your thumbs across the buttons. It also means you can scroll lists, webpages, menus and more without ever touching the screen – and considering how tall the Priv is when it’s open, that makes for a much more comfortable user experience. There’s a third layer of convenience to the Priv’s physical keyboard, and it’s a big part of what made older BlackBerrys so addictive: shortcuts. You can program any of the Priv’s keys to open any app with a single click, and each supports either a short or a long press, for a total of 52 possible shortcuts. A short-press of the C key might launch the camera, for example, while a long-press might take you to the calculator. Alternately, you can disable the shortcuts in favor of Device Search, which lets you just start typing from the home screen to jump right into a contact, app, or Google search. And within certain apps, you can press T to jump to the top of a page or B to jump to the bottom – a convenience so addictive we didn’t even need a reviewer’s guide to remind us about it, having remembered it from our days with the BlackBerry Curve.

Index Performance We’ve used the BlackBerry Priv for eight days on T-Mobile US between rural New York and Greater Boston. During that time, we’ve made many more cellular calls than usual, partly due to the fact that the Priv is just so dang comfortable to talk on. With its display deployed, it’s almost tall enough to feel like an old landline receiver. Neither we nor our callers had any complaints about sound quality over either earpiece or speakerphone, and the dedicated mute key (which at first seemed superfluous) is one of those features you have to experience to understand just how convenient it can be. While the Priv has benefited from several software updates in the short time we’ve had it, there remains plenty of room for improvement in fluidity and speed throughout. Apps crash fairly regularly, and every time the phone boots up it takes several minutes to get itself sorted, during which time the Snapdragon 808 processor seems to be working almost constantly. Just like on the Moto X, the 808 runs pretty hot on the Priv: the night before this review went to press, our device was charging on AC power while updating apps over WiFi, and within three minutes of starting its first download, it reached 119°F on the back cover. Most phones get plenty hot when updating apps on wall power, but the Priv seems to run warm all the time. (It doesn’t seem to get any benefit from it either; the Priv scores substantially lower in GeekBench 3 than does the Moto X, and despite its 3GB of DDR3 RAM, multitasking is still a somewhat pokey experience.) Maybe the processor woes have something to do with the battery life we’ve been getting, which is mediocre considering the Priv’s 3410 mAh power pack. With an average of 16 hours from wakeup to bedtime, we were able to exceed 4 hours of screen-on time just once in eight days. Now, there are plenty of possible explanations for this: we routinely run our phones harder than most folks; this is a Canadian review device not built specifically for T-Mobile; and every time it restarts it flips on a bunch of features like WiFi calling that we then have to shut off again. But that’s still a pretty lame showing given the phone’s huge battery. Also lame: the Canadian version lacks wireless charging while the US build includes it. And while all models support quick charging, none of them ship with a quick charger in the box. Index Pros + Beautiful hardware

+ Keyboard is more than just a keyboard

+ Useful software improvements

+ Best BlackBerry camera ever (and it’s pretty good by normal standards, too) Cons – Build quality not up to par with previous BlackBerrys

– Software needs refinement

– Significant performance issues

– Overpriced relative to competition Index Pricing and Availability The BlackBerry Priv is available directly from BlackBerry at a preorder price of $699, with shipments expected to resume the week of November 30th. AT&T’s full retail pricing is an even-steeper $739.99, but that can be broken down to 30 monthly payments of $24.67, or chopped down to $249.99 with a 2-year agreement. Both T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are also on deck to offer the Priv, but at press time, there was no word on a Sprint variant of the device.