Another "After A Week Of K1 Use" Review
So, I got my Keyone on Sunday and been hitting it pretty hard all week. BBMobile has a lot of tuning up software wise and I hope they do it.
I'm sticking with mine but holding onto my google pixel just in case the frustrations mount!
PROS
* Awesome keyboard of course - still getting used to typing on it but it's so much more accurate than touch screen phones. I do wish they put a raised dot on the J key like there's on on the D key.
* Love the swipe up on words. Easy to add favorite slang words / deliberate mispellings into the built in dictionary. BB Keyboard is starting to get good at guessing my next words too.
* Scrolling with keyboard is damned cool. Makes one handed use very easy and I have relatively smaller hands. You get used to the top 2 lines being the capacative, and I've quickly figured out the sensitivity. It's much more sensitive than you'd think. I wish I could adjust that.
* Speaker super loud - way louder than my Pixel and just as loud as Iphone. I've experienced no audio breakup at max volume and I stream Sirius, Spotify and Tune-in radio.
* Bluetooth works great in the car and on my LG Android Watch
* Charges fast even without boost - Full charge in an hour. I generally charge mine in the car. Blown away how quickly it charges in regular charge mode.
* Battery life is not as good as advertised but still gets me about 20 hours and I'm not nervous about not charging before bedtime anymore like I was with my Pixel. I do stream a lot of music apps as mentioned above though. Minus that I'm sure I could get two days easy.
CONS - And there are many!
* Listening over bluetooth with voice responses is wonky. Sometimes works well, sometimes not. Makes it tough to respond to texts in the car.
* Keyboard scroll doesn't work with all apps! This is frustrating as hell! Doesn't work with Newton Mail or Google Inbox, but does work with news readers, web browser and gmail app.
* Little bit slow and laggy and sometimes freezes up entirely, but not a deal-breaker - I disabled all animations and disabled hub and that sped it up significantly - I can still break it especially when streaming Sirius.
* Spacebar doesn't always wake up the screen - again really frustrating, when it works it works fast, when it doesn't it's a PITA to enter the password especially in the car.
* Screen can sometimes be unresponsive to touch - I find myself having to push the virtual buttons over and over to either switch apps or hit buttons within apps.
* Picking up calls is hard. Especially when screen is unresponsive. Would prefer an on screen button rather than a swipe. Also the reply with text message doesn't seem to work on the home screen, only when it's a notification banner when you are using the phone.
* Sometimes locks up or slows down to the point of needing a restarting or killing all open apps - reboots solve this for awhile but it comes back.
* Heats up in summer sun causing massive slowdown.
* The actual call quality is sketchy. Many people complaining that I sound like Max Headroom at the bottom of the ocean. This seems to disappear for a day or two then come back. I'm on T-Mobile. A/B'ed it with my iphone that's also on T-Mobile and the iphone had no complaints. Seems like it doesn't like ATT much when I call ATT users.
* Wifi disconnects randomly and sometimes won't reconnect without a reboot. This could be a nougat thing as I've had the same problems with the Pixel XL.
* Reboots - I'm having to reboot it several times a day due to the wifi issues, locking up, and call quality. Seems to solve the problems for a couple hours and then they rear their ugly heads again.
There's so much great stuff about this phone so I can't decide whether to be frustrated or excited. I'd say I'm somewhere in the middle. As said above, I hit it pretty hard, probably harder than the average user.
I hope they can fix these issues in software updates.
And speaking of software updates the security patch is still April's - BBMobile trying to sell themselves on updating security patches and then not getting it done...
I'll keep it for awhile - I love it in theory, epecially if BBMobile can start fixing these deficiencies.
That's it for now.