BlackBerry DTEK50 Review

BlackBerry DTEK50 Review

4:09:00 PM

It may sound like Skynet's best friend, but DTEK50 is just the name of BlackBerry's new Android smartphone

Last year’s PRIV was a mixed bag and a letdown for many of the brand’s fans, but BlackBerry is now back with a new (and very different) smartphone. Rumor has it that one (or even two) more are coming by the end of the year, but until then let’s take a look at the DTEK50.

What we have here is in many ways the exact opposite of the PRIV: full-touch candybar form factor instead of a slider, regular 1080p display instead of dual-curved QuadHD, rebranded hardware instead of a custom BlackBerry-engineered design.

Yes, it’s true: save for the back plate, the DTEK50 is identical to the Alcatel Idol 4 (not to be confused with the more advanced 4S). This was disappointing for many, but I think it’s the right idea. Maybe not the best choice of device to “borrow”, but it’s the right idea for BlackBerry to focus on the software and security side and pick up whatever hardware design they deem appropriate for the market segment they wish to target with each device.

Given its specs, price (299 USD / 264 EUR / 226 GBP ) and even its name, the DTEK50 is clearly intended to appeal to the business sector, which has always been BlackBerry’s bread and butter, not to impress with hardware capabilities, cool software features or any kind of gimmick.

Design & build quality

The DTEK50 has a clear-cut look that I can only describe as “unassuming yet elegant”. It sort of resembles older Moto G models and the Nexus 4, especially with its top and bottom mounted stereo speakers.

In terms of dimensions, this 5.2-incher can be comfortably held with one hand despite some generous bezels all-around. At 135 grams (4.76 oz), it’s also quite light, but I would have welcomed a bit more weight in the form of extra battery capacity. Overall it has a solid build which ironically is a step up from the rather creaky PRIV.

The DTEK50 wouldn’t dare call itself a BlackBerry without a notification light up front, so LED fans can rest easy. Well, sort of, because the familiar red blinking is no more: this LED doesn’t support any colors at all. Going with a white (and larger than usual) notification light might have something to do with the front camera, but more on that later.


 
Display
A 5.2-inch / 1920x1080 / 424ppi display should look crisp and the DTEK50 does not disappoint, especially since it’s an IPS panel. Not the brightest I’ve seen but it does a great job (unless you put it against this year’s flagships, which wouldn’t be all that fair). Colors look good and can be further tweaked from the settings app.
It supports the double-tap to wake gesture just like its higher-end predecessor, but enabling it might not be the best idea given the smaller battery. The battery charging green “snake” also makes a comeback.
One more thing: I don’t consider this a drawback, but the multi-touch support is limited to 5 points instead of the more common 10.
Hardware setup
We already know the hardware specs are identical to the Alcatel Idol 4, which brings nothing impressive to the table. Still, it’s nice seeing 3GB of RAM on a device in this price range.
The DTEK50 uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 617 SoC combined with the Adreno 405 GPU, making for a decent and mostly snappy device, but certainly no gaming machine.
There are plenty of sensors, including magnetometer and hall effect, and no misses in terms of connectivity: LTE/4G, Wi-Fi up to 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2 with EDR and A2DP, GPS and NFC.
Sadly, the data/charging port is of the old microUSB 2.0 variety, so it seems we’ll have to wait some more until BlackBerry makes the jump to USB Type-C. It does support Quick Charge though, but it’s the 2.0 version, which is strange since Snapdragon 617 was supposed to support QC3.0.
The SIM/microSD card tray can be populated with a second SIM in place of the memory card, which might lead you to believe the DTEK50 has some sort of dual-SIM capability, which is not the case.

Display 5.2-inch IPS LCD / 1920x1080 424ppi 24-bit
Scratch-resistant glass and oleophobic coating
5-point multitouch
Dimensions 147 x 72.5 x 7.4 mm / 5.79 x 2.85 x 0.29 in
135g / 4.76oz
CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 8-core 64-bit (4x Cortex-A53 1.5GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 1.2GHz)
GPU Adreno 405 550MHz
RAM 3GB LPDDR3
Storage 16GB built-in + up to 2TB via microSD card slot
Main camera 13MP f/2.0 with 1.125um pixel size
Optical
Dual-tone dual-LED flash, HDR, phase-detection autofocus, touch focus, face detection
Video up to 1080p @ 30fps with OIS or 1080p @ 60fps without OIS
Front camera 8MP f/2.2 with selfie flash (uses notification LED), video up to 1080p @ 30fps with OIS or 1080p @ 60fps without OIS
Connectivity LTE / HSPA / GSM
Bluetooth 4.2 with A2DP, LE (Low Energy) and EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
GPS with A-GPS, BDS, GLONASS
NFC
Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac with hotspot/tether and Wi-Fi direct
Charging/data microUSB 2.0 with Quick Charge 2.0 support
Charges to 50% in 51 minutes
Battery 2610 mAh Li-Ion
Sensors Accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, proximity, ambient light, hall effect
Extras FM Radio using wired earbuds as antenna
Customizable convenience key on right side
Notification LED (white only)
Operating system Android 6.0.1
Devices tested STH100-2 (hamburgglobal)


Benchmark performance
As expected, benchmarks revealed mediocre performance across the board:
Some didn’t run fully due to a strange network-related error. It looks like the DTEK50 blocks connections to some sites, including those of AnTuTu and Geekbench, at the OS level.
As can be seen from the graphs, the AnTuTu 15-minute stress test did not cause the device to overheat or throttle the CPU, drained about 10% from the battery.
Real-life performance
Looking past numbers and benchmarks, what we have here is a smartphone that runs well and without snags most of the time, especially if you’re not into mobile gaming. The Hub is miles away from the lag fest that it was on the PRIV when it initially launched, which is great, considering it’s one of the selling points of the device.
The DTEK50 rarely gets warm (when installing Android OS updates or patches, for example) and I didn’t notice instances of overheating. It’s not a gaming machine, which is understandable given the specs and price range.
The near-stock Android used is a great help, things would have certainly been different (read: worse) with a “skin” like many OEMs love to use these days. BlackBerry has done a good job implementing Marshmallow on their Android-based devices (on the PRIV it runs visibly better than Lollipop) so let’s hope the same happens when they move to Android M.


Software (OS & BB Apps)
BlackBerry’s Android flavor is still very close to the stock experience in terms of customization, a far cry from the deep customization other Android vendors love to do much to the dismay of their customers. Still, the security features and extras we’ve first seen on the PRIV are here as well, including the Hub which is better than ever… on Android that is. It’s still (and probably will ever be) inferior to the original, BBOS 10 version.
Apart from the Hub, BlackBerry’s productivity suite includes: Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Calendar and Device Search, plus the BBM messaging app and a handy data transfer application that supports both Android and OS10-powered BlackBerry devices.
I’ve described them all in detail in BlackBerry PRIV review but it must be mentioned that the Hub is still the best mobile email client out there, despite all the competition, especially after the latest updates which added more app integrations and the missing pinch gesture support. It’s fast, never misses emails, doesn’t lag and does wonders for productivity on the go.


 
There’s still no gallery app, so you’ll have to rely on the pre-installed Photos from Google, or find a third-party one that doesn’t suck.
As a side note, most of BlackBerry’s apps are now available for all Android phones, with a small catch: after 30 days you can either subscribe for $0.99/month or agree to see advertisements every now and then.
Before we move to the camera, a mildly interesting fact: after adding a Google account to the phone  I got the usual “New Sign-in” email but instead of DTEK50, it mentioned Acer Iconia, which isn’t even a phone (it’s a 6-year old tablet).
Camera
BlackBerry continues to work on its camera app and it shows: there are manual controls baked into it now, which might help squeezing the best shots possible from the DTEK50’s mediocre sensor.
I also took some comparison shots using the DTEK50 against the iPhone 6, Nexus 6P, Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ and BlackBery PRIV and medium light and bright light.

There’s no optical image stabilization at all, which BlackBerry tried to mitigate by using a software-based solution. It’s better than nothing but keep in mind it gets disabled for 60fps videos regardless of the resolution.
The 1.125um pixel size is all you need to know when it comes to camera performance in low-light conditions: in short it’s terrible, all the more so for videos. In bright light, however, results are decent for  this price range, but nowhere near anything you might call a flagship device. Using a different camera app did not help either.

Audio & call quality
In-call audio quality is very good, something we’ve grown to expect from BlackBerries. After PRIV’s rather sneaky mono speaker, we are again treated to a stereo setup that sounds great, albeit not very loud, which was sort of a surprise given the four individual speaker grilles.
The preinstalled Waves MaxxAudio app comes with several equalizer presets for music plus a movie mode. It can be used in simple mode (four knobs to tweak bass & treble levels, stereo separation and “revive” – whatever that is) and advanced mode which gives access to a traditional 10-band equalizer ranging from 32Hz to 16kHz.
There's an automatic mode as well, which picks the preset to use based on the audio being played at that moment.


Battery life & charging
The DTEK50 has a battery capacity of only 2610 mAh, which is low and frankly unexpected given the market segment targeted by the device. Matching PRIV’s 3410 mAh battery would have been advisable because the device can barely last a day of moderate usage (20% or less battery left in the evening) without a quick charge-up at the office.
Using the included charger with Quick Charge 2.0, the DTEK50 charges from 0 to 50% in 50 minutes and to 100% in 2 hours and a half. There is no indication of fast/normal charging however, and as far as I can see, the red/yellow/green charging indicator doesn’t display the ETA to full charge anymore. You can get an estimation in Settings -> Battery, though.
The white-only notification LED also means you have no way to quickly see the phone is fully charged, unless you allow the charging indicator to be displayed at all times, which keeps the screen dark but visibly on.
During charging, the lower part of the screen gets warm, but not the back side.
Security
Security is still front & center and DTEK, the app the phone takes part of its name from, is preinstalled and ready to give all sorts of advice regarding phone settings and permissions.
Its most useful feature is keeping tabs on what permissions apps use (and when). You can review events by app or by permission and there’s also the option to get notifications automatically every time an app accesses something (configurable for each app and permission). There are handy shortcuts to any given app’s permissions and info pages from the app manager (settings) if you need to make adjustments or even uninstall rogue apps.
A strange choice was removing the picture password unlock method that was present on the PRIV. Granted, it was a bit confusing for some users, but removing it altogether instead of fixing it is not the way to go.
Other than that, you still get BlackBerry’s hardened Android environment and the fastest security patch cycle among all Android vendors.



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