BlackBerry Priv review: Privilege granted

Final words

So is the Priv the long-overdue messiah BlackBerry so desperately needs to regain some ground in the mobile realm? Well, sadly, there is no easy answer. While the Priv is a nice device on its own, but its nature, purpose, and target audience and its position within the BlackBerry protfolio is riddled with ambiguity, which hopefully won't prove too confusing and detrimental to the model's success.

Most of us, or at least the ones who want to see the once great Canadian giant back on its feet can't help but view the Priv as a major strategic shift and a sort of drastic measure to regain some hip factor amongst the growing Android crowd.

That sort of wishful thinking might be nice on the surface, but it inevitably leads to a few less-than-favorable observations. First, there is the issue of price - if popularity is what BlackBerry is after, a €700 plus price point won't exactly invite a huge crowd considering that profit margins throughout the whole industry are slimming down.

The underwhelming Android experience is another brow raiser. Some growing pains are all but expected and BlackBerry will surely work out the kicks eventually, but still, if you go into a store today and shell out the eye-watering amount of money for the Priv, you might naturally expect it to at least perform up to par with let's say a Galaxy S6 flagship, an iPhone 6s or any other hip device.

But that is just it. The Priv might not shine as a tempting everyday user offer, but perhaps we should endeavor to look at it from another perspective, a quintessentially BlackBerry one and that would be as an enterprise-grade secure communication tool. BlackBerry is still a force to be reckoned with in the corporate world with its end-to-end communication platform and various special tailored solutions. One could argue that this is the essence of BlackBerry and its true area of expertise and it is in this context that the Priv finds itself amidst a more favorable crowd.

It constitutes a huge step forward in a few respects. It is definitely a big leap ahead of its BlackBerry siblings in terms of hardware, but, perhaps more-importantly, it opens up a whole new realm of possibilities now that it runs Android natively. Come to think about it, this is hardly a new development path for BlackBerry, which has long showed a lot of affection for the Google's sprawling app ecosystem. Whether or not the Priv will be met with approval and set BlackBerry on a new development path is yet to be seen, but it is undeniable that despite its flaws, it is currently one of the best business smartphones out there.

Here is a quick summary of our key test findings.

BlackBerry Priv key test findings:

• An Android slider is an extremely rare occurrence nowadays and the Priv has adopted the form factor masterfully for a stylish overall look.
• The Priv makes use of little premium materials like metal or glass, despite its premium price. Plastic isn't a bad choice in itself, but the particular one doesn't quite feel flagship-worthy. Built quality is only ok with some annoying flaws.
• Gorgeous 5.4-inch AMOLED display, with nice and punchy colors. The slight edge curve gives it an extra refined look. However, it exhibits a somewhat weird behavior where the pixels wouldn't completely shut off when showing black, which could potentially hurt the battery life, which we didn't have the opportunity to properly test.
• The 4-row BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard is a powerful productivity tool. It works great, plus the added touch functionality with gestures really enables using the phone without touching the screen, almost like a touchpad. The keyboard is, however, a bit too small and a bit more crammed with less key travel than most other BlackBerry phones.
• With an endurance rating of 62h the battery life is good overall, but it's on the lower side of the segment.
• All-round connectivity with future-proof LTE Cat.9, no dual-SIM option available.
• The Snapdragon 808 is highly underutilized. The software is definitely to blame. As a first attempt at Android it does quite alright, but a lot of additional optimization is needed to get comparably good CPU and GPU performance out of the otherwise capable chipset.
• Audio output quality is quite good, despite some distortion with headphones. The front-mounted speaker is on the quiet side.
• Still images offer lots of detail, and it offers some excellent panorama images. Quality is pretty good, but tends to deteriorate fast in poor light. We found the camera app is quite unstable, tending to crash and shooting stills can be slow.
• Video capture is exquisite. 4K comes out smooth with lots of detail and accurate colors. 1080p fairs equally well and so does the extra 60fps mode. Overall, great video quality.
• Multimedia software is all but missing from the Priv. In an effort to shave off bloatware, BlackBerry has left the handset with no dedicated gallery, video player or file explorer. Playback for most things is handled by Google apps, but you would need to download a few proper apps to make working with files and multimedia properly convenient.
• Blackberry's first take on Android is a near-stock experience, which despite bad optimization and a few stability issues does offer full access to the BlackBerry app and communication ecosystem, as well as at least a few clever performance-improvement features.

Now that we hopefully conveyed our view on the Priv and its perplexing nature and, as usual, we feel obliged to lay out a few alternatives for you. But, as you can imagine, we can't exactly offer you other flagship Android sliders, so it is a bit of a sticky situation. The Priv may currently be in a league of its own, but that doesn't mean we can't throw around some ideas within it price range. And, surprise, surprise at €750 or the equivalent amount of dollars, there is quite a lot of choose from. Mostly any current flagship offer form Samsung, LG, Huawei or Motorola, to name a few, is within reach. Even Apple's latest iPhone is not out of the question. In fact, with a little strain, you can even pick up an iPhone 6s Plus or a Samsung Galaxy Note5 phablet, which are arguably among the most premium option out there right now.

The BlackBerry Priv is nothing short of a milestone device and it has quite a bit to offer to any privileged prospective owner. Still, it is too early to say if the new experiment works out for the Canadian OEM and whether it would stick around for a second go. If everything goes smoothly, next time around the Priv's successor will hopefully fill in the missing pieces and affirm itself as an uncompromising high-end business offer.

As for the Priv in its current state of infancy, you should definitely not miss on buying it if you already have a complete BlackBerry collection of your own or you use BlackBerries throughout your entire company. But we guess, you wouldn't be reading this if either of these options was the case. For pretty much every other end user looking to get a high-end Android device, it seems wise to sit this one out, or at least wait for some signs of maturity and a more reasonable price tag.