BlackBerry is not giving up its mobile division anytime soon, despite all the heavy losses the company has been making in the smartphone business – losses that have forced the Canadian company to ditch its own BB10 OS in favor of Android.
The company’s initial attempt into the Android world was through the BlackBerry Priv, a phone released last year targeting the premium market with a mixture of Android and BlackBerry flavors, including the latter’s famous physical QWERTY keyboard and security features. Given the phone’s poor performance in the congested smartphone market, the company has made some drastic improvements this year with the releases of the BlackBerry DTEK50 and just recently, the BlackBerry DTEK60 was also unveiled.
With the Google Pixel XL reigning as one of the hottest phones in the market, how does the new BlackBerry DTEK60 compare against this Google flagship? Here’s a closer look.
For starters, you will notice that the BlackBerry DTEK60 has the same screen size as the Google Pixel XL – a 5.5-inch panel. The screens are AMOLED panels with the same resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. Under the hood, you come across variations of the latest Qualcomm chipsets, with the DTEK60 featuring a Snapdragon 820 as compared to the Snapdragon 821 found on the Pixel XL.
The similarities between these two are still on, with the RAM for both models standing at 4GB. On the downside, you only get one storage option of 32GB on the BlackBerry DTEK60 as compared to the 32GB and 128GB found on the Google Pixel XL. However, it is the former that outshines the latter when it comes to expandable storage thanks to the support for up to 256GB.
Heading over to the cameras, the BlackBerry DTEK60 has a massive 21MP snapper on the back, a sensor that should easily outshine the 12.3MP snapper on the Google Pixel XL, at least on paper. However, independent reviews show that the latter is so far the best in the industry, but we are yet to see the same reviews for the DTE60. As for the selfies, you get the same 8MP sensor, but with a larger aperture on the BlackBerry handset.
In terms of software, the Google Pixel XL is definitely ahead of the BlackBerry DTEK60 as the former comes with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box compared to Android 6.0 Marshmallow installed on the latter. Both phones come with USB-C ports, 3.5mm headphone jack, fingerprint scanner as well as support for fast charging, but you get a smaller 3000mAh battery in the DTEK60 as opposed to the 3450mAh unit found on the Pixel XL.
As far as price is concerned, the Google Pixel XL is by far the pricier with a base value of $769. On the other hand, BlackBerry DTEK60 is valued at just $499, the same price as last year’s Google Nexus 6P at launch.