Leap of Faith!

BlackBerry has yo-yoed with its urge to build a keyboard into its devices. After briefly dabbling with handsets that again sported a physical keyboard such as Passport and Classic, BlackBerry has gone back to the full touchscreen form factor with the new Leap.

This is a phone with a 5-inch screen, but it looks bigger - almost like a 5.5 inch device. The reason is the rather big bezel at the bottom - that has no keys, except to sport the BlackBerry logo. But the bright screen makes up for it with the edge-to-edge display on the sides. With the Leap, BlackBerry continues the tradition of concentrating on the richness of look and feel. One great thing about BlackBerry devices, has been the build quality. The Leap feels sturdy and is a bit heavy at 170 grams.

Build The dimpled rubberised back panel adds to the impression that it can take some rough handling. The rear cover is not removable, and the overall design is that of a sturdy unibody. As said earlier, the Leap looks much bigger than a 5-incher, and it is also bulky to hold. The power button at the top also makes things a trifle difficult. We had to strain a little to access it.

The slot on the left side of the Leap houses the SIM and micro SD cards. We didn’t have to hunt for a pin to open the tray. At the top is the power button and the headphone jack. The volume rockers are on the right, with the BlackBerry Assistant/Mute button between them. The front houses the 2MP camera and flash. At the rear, it sports a 8MP camera and flash. A small speaker grill is at the bottom.

The Leap is loaded with the latest BB 10.3.1 OS, 16GB internal memory (expandable) and 2GB RAM. These seem reasonable and like what most recent phones have, but for some reason, BlackBerry seems to persist with old-gen processors. The Leap, like the Classic, comes with a Snapdragon S4 Plus Dual-core 1.5 GHz processor.

For the screen, the Leap has a 720 x 1280 pixels (~294 ppi pixel density) display, not bad for a mid-range phone, but it does not do well in bright sunlight. The big form factor poses a slight problem because of the BlackBerry 10 OS that requires us to swipe all over the screen. The big bezel at the bottom complicates things as we had to swipe up from the edge of the screen - without touching the bottom bezel.

OS and other features Much has been written about the BB10 OS that did away with the back button, except in the Classic. So even going ‘back’ from an app requires a swipe. A big chunk of BlackBerry aficionados are staying away from the company’s recent handsets because BB10 is the only mobile OS without a back button - capacitive or otherwise.

The best part of BB10 is the Hub that brings all messages, emails, tweets, instant messages and even missed calls - in one place and we don’t have to click multiple apps to access them. You can get to a specific account by tapping the icon on the lower left corner or swiping the Hub screen to the right.

BlackBerry has been known for its physical keyboard - there were those who even went to the extent of saying a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard is not a BlackBerry at all. In BB10.3, the on screen keyboard is just brilliant. The keyboard itself is quite big, making it comfortable for us to type, even in the Leap. What makes the keyboard great is the auto-suggestions. The suggested words don’t appear on top, but next to the letter of the word we are expected to type. The words appear on top of the keys and we have to just swipe up the key to insert the word.

The 8MP camera, for a mid-range device, is quite good, though it does not have the wide range of features other phones have. This is okay considering that this is a device targeted at enterprise customers. There are a handful of settings like the five scene modes (Auto, Action, Whiteboard, Night and Beach or Snow). It also has a HDR mode. There is even a video stabilisation mode that knocks off the little irritating shakes. The camera also does well in low light conditions, again, something not many phone cameras can boast of.

Bottomline One major aspect BlackBerry has not been able to address is the availability of apps. Yes, we can use the Amazon Appstore to install Android apps, but even that is not enough to compensate for the poor app ecosystem. For instance, many cab aggregator and mobile banking apps are not available on BlackBerry or Amazon app stores. Yes, we can use apps like Snap that can install apk files, but that may not be entirely safe.

The big plus about the Leap is the battery life. The Li-Ion 2800 mAh unit offered almost two days of power with 20 minutes of voice calls, three or four hours of apps (including Twitter) and 15 minutes of videos and media. But we didn’t get to install too many apps because of the poor range and choice.

Price: ₹21,490

Love : Build, Camera, Battery, BB Hub, Keypad

Hate : Bulky, Lack of app availability, Lag during operation