The BlackBerry DTEK60: Yes You Can Fall in Love with a BlackBerry Again

BlackBerry users—who, after all, are professionals working in secure areas—often feel phone envy. While, historically, their phones have been secure and more recently they could run Android, they just weren’t sexy. Well that changed with the BlackBerry DTEK60 which is the first BlackBerry which can stand up to an iPhone and in some critical areas kick its butt.

For a lot of BlackBerry users, having a phone they can again be proud of has been a long-standing goal. The BlackBerry PRIV was actually a very nice phone but wicked expensive and a lot of people just didn’t feel they needed that physical keyboard anymore and wanted something more “iPhone-like” which could run a lot of common apps and they could actually be proud of.

Well the wait is over, the BlackBerry DTEK60 is the phone they–and maybe you—have been waiting for.

Snap Dragon 820

At the heart of this phone is the Snap Dragon 820 chipset. This provides a number of compelling advantages, which include improved quad-core performance, QuickCharge 3.0, improved LTE support, MU-MIMO Wi-Fi, fingerprint reader support, improved camera support (both resolution and HDR), advanced sound support, and it will support up to a 2TB SD Card (Yes. 2TB—which you actually can’t buy yet).

In terms of what this means, you get a 2x performance difference over the Snapdragon 810, 3X network improvement when connected to a current generation LTE network, 40X graphics improvement, and zero shutter lag in the camera.

My favorite features are MU-MIMO Wi-Fi support which screams if you have a MU-MIMO router (I have 4) and the QuickCharge 3.0 feature which provides 80 percent charge in 30 minutes. Often a lifesaver.

In short there are few phones in the market that outperform this one.

DTEK60

In use this is a pretty amazing phone, this is the second 820-class phone I’ve tested and it doesn’t disappoint. The phone has glass on front and back which actually gives it a really nice feel, and the improvements in glass coating keep the phone surprisingly fingerprint free (I was a tad worried about that). It has a 21-megapixel camera in the back and an 8-megapixel camera for selfies—both of which seem to work very well. Battery capacity with 24 hours of mixed use is pretty impressive—though, like all phones, you have to keep an eye out for apps that like to drain the phone down to nothing more quickly. I’ve been getting between a day and a half and two days much of the time.

This is the second phone I’ve received with a fingerprint reader on the back and now I’m not sure why you’d put it anyplace else. The placement on the back makes it far easier to use with one hand and unlocking the phone is nearly instantaneous.

This is a BlackBerry so it leads with security. That means it has secure boot which prevents it from being infected by a root kit, something most other phones are vulnerable to. It also has BBM, BlackBerry’s secure email service and hooks into the BlackBerry device management platform for enterprise use.

If you use Office365 or Exchange, BBM is a great way to securely blend those services with others and can be a messaging godsend.

Given this phone runs current generation Android, all of the Android apps you love (and most iPhone apps have Android variants that are very similar) are supported. So, you can have your business experience and your games on the same phone—if your boss and company allow it.

Wrapping Up

The BlackBerry DTEK60 is one of the most impressive phones I’ve ever used and—because I feel every phone should be this secure—my new favorite. This is because it combines the parts of the phone that are fun with the parts of the phone that get the job done very well while looking hot. And I can say that without being sexist (because it is a phone)—another plus! I do wish they’d gone with a bigger battery and I still miss the PRIV’s keyboard a little bit, but both of these are nits and, overall, I’d recommend the Blackberry DTEK60 to anyone who wants a secure phone that they can be proud of. It is a little sexy beast!