TCL who bought the rights to manufacture phones under the BlackBerry name
recently announced that they are killing their BlackBerry lineup and they're not
going to do it anymore so what better way to celebrate then to check out what
I would say is sort of a spiritual successor this is the FX Tech Pro One
and the model number is the QX 1000 this
is yes my friends a slider phone with a
physical keyboard now I have not so much
as had this out of the packaging so we're gonna be experiencing it together
they've got all these supported bands listed on the back of the box here this
is the 128 gig ROM 16 gig RAM model
first up we've got a whatever this is
kind of reminds me of those horrible belt holsters that people used to have
for their phones except it doesn't go on your belt it's just like a sleeve got
one of those handy-dandy modular wall warts I've clearly lost my touch here I
swear I know how to do an unboxing you know what just forget it
okay all right we've got a USB a two
type-c cable oh that's cute the wall
board has that razor green plastic insert you know much razor claim they
paid to make that exclusive to their laptops apparently not enough and now
the phone itself immediate impressions I
want to say dr. Jekyll mr. Hyde from the
front it actually looks and feels very
modern it's got the 2d glass so it's curved on the left and right edges feels
actually surprisingly premium and then
the back I don't know what it is but
some manufacturers managed to make their phones out of cheap plastic and have it
feel premium while others managed to make their phones out of solid metal and
have that feel kind of cheap so whether it's just how smooth it is like the
kind of a lack of texture to it or whatever else it is the back definitely
doesn't feel as nice as the front look at this difference in thickness guys
you're basically clipping a keyboard to
your phone which if you use it often enough there might be something to be
said for that all right it defaults to
English UK you know what I like the Queen's English as much as the next
Canadian got a fingerprint reader let's find out where it is apparently it's on
the right hand side of the father oh that's oh that's kind of an odd spot for
a fingerprint you know I don't actually mind it though so it's right under the
lock button one thing I don't like about having the fingerprint reader on the
side is that sometimes if you want to unlock with your left hand it can be kind of a pain in the butt but I think I
could get around that with this one if I just go okay well my lock buttons my
index and then my middle finger is gonna be my fingerprint reader a they've
actually opted for Google's latest gesture based control schema also known
as the iPhone control schema now this is
the thing I was saying was nasty before do you hear that sound dude and I don't
even have to hit it hard I bet I could turn off the haptic feedback and I'd
still have that issue or something oh
lordy what does that button do oh cool
it's got a dedicated shutter button I'm gonna take a couple pictures here oh wow
that is horrible daddy's got two chins
you know no no no no Andy it's fine you're good you're good it's just this
picture it's it's this picture this you
know does this does this camera make me look fat you know like it's this camera
makes you look fat it's not I'm back in myself back in myself into a corner here
it's been a while since I've seen image processing this bad oh so I thought it
was more of a slider but it's actually
more of like like a flip up as that
hinge feels great but shockingly solid
like listen to the sound of it
okay if I hold the bass steady because
like you know obviously it's still a phone like that's pretty good
I'm impressed theoretically having
tactile buttons is a big advantage because you can feel your way around the
keyboard but anything you gain from your tactile buttons you lose in having to
press auxiliary keys like shift or control or you know another layer to
access your special characters for emojis or whatever else look at this
it's got little nipples for the F and the J as though you're like intended to
type on it but even with my little homunculus hands that is a seriously not
happening kind of situation okay let's
be more realistic I'm gonna type with my thumbs did I get a double press there I
think these died for a reason oh man why
do they have this gigantic taps log
interestingly the lock button and the fingerprint sensor on the back when
you're in keyboard mode so they're kind of not that easy to get it alright it's
still way faster for me to use a
touchscreen now one argument that I have heard for physical keyboards on phones
is people who do a lot of remote server administration for example using an app
like pulse wave but the thing is compared to pressing a secondary
function button and then trying to find a special character I find particularly
with some third-party keyboards like the one I use if you change the long press
delay if you can access your special characters actually much faster cool
hinge keyboards are still stupid cameras
terrible maybe I should apply the system update and see if that fixes all the problems
that I have miraculously most of the things I don't like about it are things
that are obviously not going to be good on anything other than a tier one
smartphone things like the camera and it has some redeeming qualities it does
have a headphone jack which is pretty nice to see it's got stereo speakers
speaker left speaker right here it's got
USB type-c for charging which is a lot better than we used to see on these kind
of Randolph owns in the past and like I
said before hey this hinge is really nice if you're
after a physical keyboard I haven't seen anything in the market that exists
that's better than this and of course you don't have to use it all the time what is this game called typing typing
defense okay here we go here we go abs bump ow how's my castle dude
drugged beer what is this game I was
probably too hard on it before it's not that bad and this is another thing
that's improved a lot on basic devices over the years on the screen actually
surprisingly usable I'd say the factory calibration is a
little bit on the warm side out of the box but other than that it's pretty
sharp the contrast is pretty good the fact that this is like a pentile display
you're getting a little bit of like fringing around high contrast areas like
these white characters on this dark background because it is only 1080p now
let's get to a couple of the forgot to mention it's got a 32 hundred million
power battery this is Android Pi and it's basically very very stock looking
which I like and of course it's got a snapdragon 835 processor wait what
snapdragon 835 oh yeah and the list
price right now is somewhere between 650
and 700 US dollars now if this was a
feature phone and it was just like okay yeah we've got this gimmick we've got
this great hinge which really does feel great apparently it's rated for a
hundred thousand open rooms and close it it feels really nice and we've got this
physical keyboard and it's like 300 bucks or something like that if you
really care about that feature you might have my attention but the fact that
you're running an ancient top-tier chip
and you're priced at in-between flagship
killer so something like a poco f1 and something like a true flagship like a
Galaxy S or Galaxy Note series on this old hardware that's pretty tough pill to
swallow realistically though if what
you're after is a physical keyboard on your Android phone you're basically going to buy this
because you can't really take your business elsewhere and as far as the
implementations that I've seen go this is definitely not the worst one thing
they got right about the keyboard layout is the fact that all the essential keys
are basically there and that's a big advantage over the ones that try to flip
the keyboard out this way where it's just too cramped to be legitimately
useful I would have still like to have that gap in the middle to make the typing a bit more comfortable but then
you would have compromised on having a familiar layout like that so I don't
think there's really one single right answer to that question my answer is I
wouldn't switch over to this and I probably wouldn't recommend that you do
it either but if you know someone who's really yearning for the physical keyboard I was gonna say there are worse
options out there but there just aren't thanks for watching ShortCircuit today
on the purl 1 by FX tech guys make sure
you're subscribed this is where we're gonna be doing all of our fun little casual unboxings of stuff that's like
super cool and kitschy but just doesn't
quite justify a full Linus tech tips experience