BlackBerry’s QWERTY keypad is one of the most-loved features of its phones, and now one major Android backer will use this to attract BlackBerry users. At a time when BlackBerry is losing its smartphone market share, it could be a good move to win back some of its loyalists.
It’s an add-on, not a QWERTY phone
Most of the Android devices on the market are full touchscreen devices, and the handful of Android device makers which even tried making devices with physical keyboards failed miserably. But now Samsung, the biggest and the most successful Android device maker, is making an attempt at bringing the QWERTY keypad back.
There is a twist to the story. The company unveiled the physical keyboard when it introduced the Galaxy Note 5 yesterday, but it is not a part of the phone. Rather, it’s a case that snaps on and off. The case has a full QWERTY keyboard and three more buttons that were most commonly found on the Android devices of earlier days. They are the back, home and menu buttons. One of the drawbacks of the case is it marginally elongates the device, which already has 5.7-inch screen
Samsung phone giving a BlackBerry feel
The screen of the Note 5 device adapts to the case when it is clipped on it. This case is somewhat similar to the Korean firm’s S-View covers, on which the information is displayed only on the upper part of the screen where the user can actually see it while the rest of the portion goes completely blank. When the case is taken off, everything returns to normal. So while using a Samsung, you can have a BlackBerry experience as well.
And considering the recent closeness between BlackBerry and Samsung, there are good chances the Korean firm will not be sued by BlackBerry as it did Ryan Seacrest’s start-up, which created the BlackBerry-like Typo keyboard for iPhones.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 runs on the powerful Exynos 7420 processor, which is also used in the Galaxy S6. It has 4GB of RAM and a rear-facing camera of 16MP. It comes with an AMOLED display with an excellent QUAD HD screen resolution of 1440×2560 pixels and 518 ppi. The only issue with the device is that it does not have a slot for a microSD card to expand its internal storage.
