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Design
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As for hardware controls, we've got a power button on the left, a volume rocker on the right, and, just beneath it, the very, very useful mute key. The Android nav buttons are placed on a capacitive strip, just between the screen and hardware keyboard.
Display
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Snapdragon 625's key features |
Hardware
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A Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 powers the KEYone, ticking at 2.0 GHz. Built on a 14 nm technology (read all about nanometers here), it's an energy-efficient, octa-core processor, packaged with an Adreno 506 GPU. Seen on phones like the Huawei Nova Plus and Lenovo P2, we'd say it's a pretty good processor, and we expect it to work very well with the slightly retouched Android 7.1 Nougat on KEYone.
3 GB of RAM seems like a bit less than expected for what is an upper-midrange device, as nowadays the norm is usually 4 GB of RAM. Still, we believe the KEYone will do a good job at multitasking with what it has. As for internal storage, we've got 32 GB on board and a microSD card slot for an expansion of up to 2 TB.
We were pretty happy to find out that the KEYone has a generous battery with a capacity of 3,505 mAh. Of course, it remains to be seen how well the software does at optimizing battery usage, but the size of that juicebox definitely suggests a long battery life.
Camera
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As for the selfie snapper, it sports an 8 MP sensor, so one's mugshots just might be too detailed to share. Again, we need some playtime with the KEYone to see how it works in the real world!
We've got 4K @30FPS video recording capabilities, and it seems there's no 60 FPS option for the lower resolution modes. So, no slow-motion as well, in case you were wondering. Also, make sure you fill that microSD card slot if you intend to grab a lot of 4K footage — the extreme resolution goes through storage like a 1,000-degree knife goes through butter.
Expectations
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So, what do we expect the KEYone to be? Well, it's a classy-looking, metal smartphone that just says "I'm serious business". Its hardware is definitely above average, and it remains to be seen if TCL did a good job with internal design and optimizations. For the price of $549 in the US, we feel the handset should be a performer with very few drawbacks and, so far, we see no reason for it not to be one. We guess only time will tell!
