Back in the day, when BlackBerry was the premier smartphone manufacturer, you could count on its devices to have two features: a physical keyboard and longBlackBerry smartphone battery life. A lot has changed since then, but BlackBerry Motion still retains part of its legacy . It may lack a classic keyboard, but it makes up for it with one of the largest smartphone batteries I’ve used all year. This should make some die-hard fans happy, right? We’re not sure when (or if) the Motion will come to the US, but that’s okay: it’s a decent phone, but it’s overpriced. Unlike the last two all-touch BlackBerrys, the Motion is more than just a clone of an existing device. In fact, I think the Motion is the best touchscreen BlackBerry in years.
BlackBerry phones have always been conservative, but the Motion’s body is a beautiful mix of glass, aluminum and soft-touch plastic that looks like carbon fiber. To give the Motion some extra character, BlackBerry Mobile rounded the top edge of the phone while keeping the bottom edge flat. It’s a neat touch, but hard to appreciate unless you look closely. Still, the fact that BlackBerry Mobile is trying to give a glass and metal slab any personality is a welcome change of pace .The phone looks better than it feels, though. It’s much taller than the BlackBerry KEYone, so people with smaller hands will have to jiggle the smartphone to reach the top of the screen. Meanwhile, the Motion’s flat sides give it a boxy, utilitarian feel Then again, if ever there was a phone that could escape the utilitarian feel, it’s
the BlackBerry. What’s more, the Motion is rated IP67 for water and dust resistance. Try implementing this on a phone with a physical keyboard.When I reviewed the BlackBerry KEYone earlier this year, I said it was a bit strange to test a phone with such a narrow screen after being spoiled by devices like the Galaxy S8 and LG G6. Still, even with its longer, more traditional display, the Motion still feels a little dated compared to other recent phones.
It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of space below the 5.5-inch screen. This is where the capacitive navigation keys and physical home button are located. There’s also a fingerprint sensor stuck in there, and while it works quickly most of the time, it often gets wonky when my thumbs get a little sweaty.Honestly, there’s not much to say about the Motion’s 5.5-inch LCD screen. It runs at 1080p, as you’d expect from a phone in this price range, and looks generally nice. Colors are pleasant, if not exciting, and viewing angles are pretty good; you have to look from a pretty extreme angle to see the color distortion. The Motion’s screen lacks the vibrant tones and deep blacks of AMOLED panels like the one on the DTEK60, but I’m not sure anyone expected otherwise. All in all, this is a very functional monitor and nothing more. Still, for a brand whose core mission is to improve productivity, that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker.
Despite some attractive new designs, things inside are essentially the same as in the KEYone. BlackBerry Mobile has once again opted to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset, Adreno 506 GPU and a relatively paltry 32GB of storage. (Thankfully, you can pop a microSD card into the SIM tray and enjoy your movies and photos.) The Motion comes with 4GB of memory, compared to the KEYone’s 3GB, but the biggest deviation from the KEYone formula is the Motion’s 4,000mAh battery . This is one of the biggest tests we ‘ve tested this year, and it’s clearly a throwback to the days when BlackBerry was the king of
BlackBerry Mobile batterylife.
BlackBerry has never really been interested in a specs war with the rest of the industry. In fact, Motion is not a flagship product designed to bring power users together under the BlackBerry umbrella. With its Snapdragon 625 chipset and 4GB of RAM, the Motion is definitely mid-range, but that doesn’t mean it’s not for me. There’s enough horsepower here to let me switch between Slack, Spotify, Gmail, and Trello with ease. All in all, I rarely notice hiccups in my daily life. Productivity is a priority for BlackBerry, a
nd Motion seems adequate for the tasks most people might need to complete in a day. What’s more, it’s clear that the Motion was designed with longevity in mind. Qualcomm’s power-hungry chipset and 1080p display pair perfectly with the massive 4,000mAh Motion battery inside, so the Motion can typically last a full two days before needing to be recharged. To be clear, I spent two full days checking email like a maniac, frantically Googling and browsing YouTube videos. On a quiet weekend, I was able to stretch the Motion’s battery life to nearly two and a half days before plugging it in again. Not bad at all.
No US carriers have committed to selling the BlackBerry Motion, and as far as we know, it may never be sold unlocked in the US. It costs $600 CAD (about $470 USD) in Canada, and the only way you can buy it is likely to be from an online retailer in another country. While I know this isn’t a big deal to some BlackBerry die-hards, it’s worth taking a deep breath and exploring other options. After all, the Motion has the clear edge in terms of security, but there are sleeker, more capable options for about the same price.
Consider the OnePlus 5T. It was designed to replace phones that were only a few months old, offering flagship-level performance and an extra-long AMOLED screen for $499. That big buck also gets you one of Qualcomm’s top-tier Snapdragon 835 chipsets, 6GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, all of which help the 5T eclipse the Motion in terms of sheer performance. You’ll have to use a smaller battery, though, and recent concerns about security breaches may mean a OnePlus is out of the question for some BlackBerry fans.
In that case, there are devices like the $499 Essential PH-1 . It may not have the best camera I’ve tested this year, but it’s certainly one of the most perfectly made
Smartphone Battery BlackBerry‘ve ever used — considering founder Andy Rubin’s embrace of Apple’s approach to premium design , which is not surprising. The Essential uses the same Snapdragon 835 chipset as the OnePlus 5T, but it comes with a generous 128GB of storage and one of the cleanest versions of Android you’ll find. Who could forget its design?
The BlackBerry Motion is a solid follow-up to a phone that I liked more than I expected, and overall it got more things right than wrong. More importantly, I get the impression that the folks at BlackBerry Mobile/TCL are focusing on what really matters to their core fans. That being said, it’s hard to
recommend BlackBerry Motion to anyone who hasn’t sworn allegiance to the brand. It’s just a niche device, and considering how fierce the competition is, you won’t get enough for the money you spend. Unless you’re absolutely obsessed with security or want to spend money to keep your beloved phone brand alive, the BlackBerry Motion is ultimately a good phone but also a terrible deal.
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