Well, one of them, anyway, I think the Evolve was the only one released after. I charged up my old BlackBerry Key2 LE and threw the sim for a prepaid service I'm testing into it. This LE version of the Key2 came out in October 2018 and was a budget version of the Key2. It's nearing 6 years old, and the tl;dr is that it's surprisingly still not bad to use.

Spec-wise, the phone has 4gb of ram and a Snapdragon 636 processor, which apparently means "old version" in tech speak when compared to the standard Key2. None of that really matters to me. What does matter is the answer to whether or not it could feasibly be used today.

I hate those asshole bloggers and journalists who write an entire 5 act play before getting to the answer, so here it is: the answer is yes, but with the giant caveat that the battery cannot hold up and would require having a charger nearby throughout the day.

Pros:

  • It is dual-sim, taking one nano sim and one micro sim
  • The keyboard is amazing and has a backlight, which is wonderful
  • The space bar contains a fingerprint sensor and the placement feels so natural to use
  • Navigating through the UI moves fast enough to not be annoying at all
  • It gets 4G/LTE data speeds and pages load decently enough to functionally use

Cons:

  • The battery life due to its age, but the capacity is small compared to today's standards anyway
  • The camera is pretty meh even for 2018, but it's in line with budget version expectations
  • The last security patch was November 2020's, which is? was? normal for Android but is still crap when the phone can still function today

Since I mentioned the camera, here are a couple sample photos. I didn't edit them at all despite the extreme desire to fix that overexposure.

Overexposure when the light source is behind / Underexposure when the light source is to the side

The first picture is way too overexposed, and even with trying to adjust the focus point manually, it didn't really know what to do with the natural light from the window. The second pic looks pretty okay in comparison, though I think it's underexposed. It works if you need to take quick snaps on the go, but obviously you're not going to get printable/frameable quality portraits out of it.

I have Nova Launcher installed and got the home screen and app drawer looking pretty nice.

The phone's home screen / The phone's app drawer

I think the screen size is perfect for my use, but someone really into mobile games or Youtube might disagree.

Sadly it's running a very old Android version / The screen size is perfect paired with the keyboard / The rear has a nice, grippy texture

The pictures were taken with my Samsung and yes, it's sitting on my bed. Ain't no lightboxes nor professional-level DSLRs in this house.

All in all I'll probably keep the spare sim in it for the rest of my testing of the service. Since I'm home nearly 24/7 and have a primary phone, I'm not worried about the poor battery life. It's still fun to play with randomly throughout the day.