The display on the BlackBerry Motion is a 5.5-inch IPS LCD with a Full HD resolution of 1080 x 1920 px. That works out to 403ppi and a 16:9 aspect ratio. It's safe to say you won't be getting the latest and greatest display technology on any BlackBerry these days. However, the company has sourced another kind of glass called "Dragon Trail". It features the "world's first nano-diamond coating" on a smartphone.
The colors on the BlackBerry Motion are very similar to those on the BlackBerry KEYone: slightly oversaturated for maximum viewing pleasure. The display yielded an average deltaE of 5.6 while the max deltaE was found in one of the shades of gray. The display has a maximum brightness of 393 nits under manual adjustment, meanwhile, that number jumps up to a maximum of 514 nits with adaptive brightness enabled.
Display test | 100% brightness | ||
Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | ||
0.463 | 670 | 1448 | |
0 | 647 | ∞ | |
0.468 | 640 | 1368 | |
0.00 | 625 | ∞ | |
0.321 | 579 | 1804 | |
0.399 | 566 | 1419 | |
0.397 | 554 | 1395 | |
0.456 | 514 | 1128 | |
0.266 | 467 | 1756 | |
0 | 437 | ∞ | |
0.297 | 431 | 1451 | |
0.00 | 422 | ∞ | |
0 | 420 | ∞ | |
0 | 412 | ∞ | |
0.345 | 393 | 1140 | |
0.02 | 377 | 25133 |
Out of its box, this display is tuned very cool. Whites have a blu-ish tone while colors appear to be slightly oversaturated. Unfortunately for those who like to tweak photos, there is no adjustment for tuning the display aside from a color temperature slider.
Sliding it "cooler" doesn't make it look any better, but sliding it all the way to the "warm" setting yielded a lower deltaE of 5.1. Doing this brought the display some degree closer to accuracy, though it could certainly be even warmer and still more accurate.
Finally, because of the relatively average maximum brightness, the Motion scored an unimpressive sunlight contrast in our tests.
Like the KEYone before it, the BlackBerry Motion is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625. This means it's quite versatile when it comes to network connectivity thanks to its quad-band GSM model. The Motion is capable of LTE-Advanced with theoretical download speeds of 450 Mbps with upload speeds of 50 Mbps.
There are five variants of the BlackBerry Motion listed on BlackBerry's website. There's a single SIM model for EMEA and Asia Pacific (BBD100-1), a single SIM for North America and Latin America (BBD100-2), a CDMA Sprint model (BBD100-3), a model for greater China (BBD100-5) and a dualSIM model for international markets (BBD100-6).
At the time this writing, the BlackBerry Motion has just been announced for availability in the States as GSM Unlocked.
The Motion also supports 2.4 GHz (b/g/n) and 5 GHz (ac) Wi-Fi. You'll also get Bluetooth 4.2 (supporting A2DP, EDR, and Bluetooth LE), NFC (for mobile payments, Android Beam, or quick pairing), and Wi-Fi Direct for faster data connection between Android devices. For global positioning, the Motion supports A-GPS, GLONASS, and BDS2. Unlike the KEYone, the BlackBerry Motion does not have support for FM Radio.
There is a 3.5mm headphone jack on this device and the phone is compatible with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 via the USB-C port. Speaking of which, this port supports OTG and is rated for data transfers on the USB 2.0 standard - no USB 3.0 here.
The BlackBerry Motion has the largest battery capacity of any BlackBerry before it - there's a 4,000 mAh power pack sealed-in. The BlackBerry KEYone had a smaller 3,505 mAh battery, but it also had a smaller 4.5-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio. We are expecting that the BlackBerry Motion fares better in our battery endurance tests than the KEYone did.
The BlackBerry Motion scored a very good rating of 94h. There's a talk time of 23:51h, a web browsing score of 13:45, and a video playback score of 15:01h. The Motion scored better than the BlackBerry KEYone consistently, thanks to its generously sized battery. Still, we feel that the phone should have done better in our standby tests. It yielded around 280h but we think it could have pushed much farther past the 300h mark with this type of hardware.
The Motion supports the Quick Charge 3.0 charging standard. The included charger caps at 15W (9V @ 1.67A) and brought the Motion from 0% to 26% in 30 minutes of charging. One hour later, it reached 55%. Some competitors are able to reach 50% or so in half an hour so the charging speed is largely unspectacular.
The BlackBerry Motion features a "Boost mode" for charging the battery. Upon plugging in the phone, you'll be presented with a couple of options: 'Charge only' or 'Boost mode'. Everyone knows you can switch any phone to airplane mode to let it charge a bit quicker. You can use Boost Mode when you've got a very limited time to charge the Motion - this will reduce processing power and turn off animations to maximize the amount of capacity recharged while making sure that you don't miss any calls or messages.
The same Power Center app that we saw on the KEYone is also here on the Motion. At its most basic, the Power Center app gives you recommendations on which settings to adjust for optimal battery life, and it can notify you if a specific app is hogging battery resources.
Power Center: Introduction • Recommendations • Suggestion • Settings
Actually getting apps to save you some power under active usage is a bit more of an involved process. Unlike other phones that notify you when an app is draining precious battery life, BlackBerry's Power Center doesn't quite work like that. You have to manually set up the apps that you want to save battery. There are three saving profiles: Performance, Balanced, and Energy Saving.
Adding an app • Power saving profiles • Performance • Balanced • Energy Saving
You can also set each power saving option for apps manually. You have the choice of adjusting the brightness, rendering resolution, and even the frame rate. We would advise you test out the settings before you set them for good. We say this because adjusting Instagram's resolution rendered it unusable.
Tip us
1.7m 126k
RSS
EV
Merch
Log in I forgot my password Sign up