BlackBerry has had a rough few years. Even with their newest OS, Blackberry 10 is pretty much dead with no supported apps and slow performance. To deal with the problem, Blackberry created a new phone, the BlackBerry Priv. The Priv is a seven hundred dollar android phone that still has a classic BlackBerry design. To start off with, the specs are absolutely amazing. It has a Snapdragon 808 CPU (central processing unit), Adreno 418 GPU (graphics processing unit), 32GB of storage (expandable with SD Card), and 3GB of RAM. It also has a 2K (1440 x 2560 resolution) amoled screen. Amoled screen means black pixels would turn off to save battery life.

The reason people bought BlackBerry was for the keyboard and with the newest phone it got a lot better. While holding the phone you just swipe up to reveal the keyboard. It is a lot easier to type on screen, and personally I think it’s kinda cool. The keyboard can also be used as a cursor by sliding your fingers up and down to scroll on websites. For all the reasons mentioned, I like it. However, there are many reasons why I think it’s a terrible buy. The Priv gets hot, it crashes, and sometimes notifications won’t show up. Like every Android handset out there, BlackBerry decided to add apps that only come installed on their phone. One specific app is the BlackBerry Hub. The Hub shows you all of your incoming notifications like emails, social media, and messengers. The Hub seems like a good idea but ultimately falls short. You want to read an email you got on the Hub?…. it will kick you to gmail. It won’t let you read and reply from the Hub which is pointless. If I’m going to get all my notifications in one app, I’d like to read and reply in that one app. I don’t want to keep on switching between apps.

In conclusion, buy something else or wait for the Priv 2. I mentioned how good the specs are but I can buy Nexus 5x which has the exact same specs but for $380 dollars cheaper. Also, the BlackBerry name just doesn’t have the weight anymore. While people brag about their new iPhone, nobody can just say “Hey guys, I got a new BlackBerry.” That would be ridiculous. This is Blackberry’s first android phone, maybe next year they will fix the problems but for now just buy anything else.