For the original German review, click here.

TCL Communications first presented its BlackBerry smartphone at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. The KEYone looks very similar to a classic BlackBerry device with a physical keyboard below the screen. The so-called Smart Keyboard also has shortcut functions that you can customize to open any preferred app with the press of a button. The area is also touch sensitive and supports horizontal as well as vertical swipe gestures.

TCL does not use high-end hardware. The heart of the smartphone is a Snapdragon 625 in combination with 3 GB of RAM as well as 32 GB eMMC storage. The latter can be expanded via a microSD card. The cameras promise good results thanks to their decent specifications.

At the time of testing, the BlackBerry KEYone is available from $550. This is quite a lot considering its technical specifications. However, its promise to be the most secure Android smartphone plus its fully-fledged keyboard with great features might make it worth it.

We are including the BlackBerry KEYone’s predecessor, the DTEK60, into our comparison field. $100 more could get you the Samsung Galaxy S8, while the iPhone 7 lies in the same price range as the BlackBerry KEYone. If you do not want to spend so much money, you could also take a look at the Honor 8 that is available for about $325, but still offers great specifications.

Update 08/21-72017: TCL rolls out build number AAN358 for the BlackBerry KEYone. For details please refer to the Software section.