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Battery life
- 3000mAh battery gives day-long stamina
- It can be fully charged in just over an hour
BlackBerry promises 24 hours of "mixed use" out of the DTEK60's 3000mAh battery, which is a rather vague statement given that everyone's demands are different.
However, in an average day where we replied to emails, surfed the web, played a few games and streamed some music via Spotify, we found that the phone's stamina was more than adequate. In fact, there wasn't a single day where we were in danger of running out of juice before bedtime.
If you're a heavy user then you may find that's not the case, but mercifully the DTEK60 supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge standard, which allows you to grab a few more hours of battery life on just a 15-minute charge. To fully top-up the battery it takes just over an hour.
During our usual video test – where a HD video clip is played for 90 minutes with the volume at maximum and screen brightness set to full – the DTEK60 shed 20% of its battery.
That’s not the best result we’ve seen, with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge for example losing just 14%, but it beats the 22% drop exhibited by the HTC 10 and the 32% loss shown by the Pixel XL.
Camera
- 21MP camera is best used in manual mode
- 8MP front-facing camera has LED flash for selfies
The DTEK60's 21MP rear-facing camera comes with its own custom app, produced by BlackBerry, which boasts a suite of options including HDR, slow-motion, panorama and manual controls.
It also comes with a "Focus before capture" mode which aims to eradicate blurry, ill-defined images, but comes with a slightly longer delay when taking a snap.
Camera performance is pretty decent, with the DTEK60 being swift to take an image and performing well in illuminated conditions. In low-light it's not quite as adept as phones like the iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S7, and overall image quality doesn't quite match those handsets, either.
Colors often appear washed out and when there's a strong contrast between light and darkness – a building shot against a bright sky, for example – the phone has a worrying habit of oversaturating the lighter area and putting the rest of the picture in darkness.
In almost all cases, using the manual controls is your best bet at getting the ideal shot. Another disappointment is how far the camera sensor sticks out on the back of the device, meaning the phone can't be laid flat on a table without wobbling.
On the front of the BlackBerry DTEK60 you'll find an 8MP snapper complete with an LED "selfie flash", which we imagine is really useful when taking sultry and seductive self-portraits in dark rooms.
The rear-facing camera can record 4K video at 30fps, or 1080p at a smoother 60fps. The selfie cam is capable of capturing 1080p video at 30fps, and both have a video stabilization feature, which aims to reduce the effect of shaking hands.
