Blackberry Passport News: Blackberry Tries to Make a Comeback with Its Sexy New Smartphone

By Kara Michelle Oct 12, 2014 08:53 PM EDT

Blackberry Passport News: Blackberry Tries to Make a Comeback with Its Sexy New Smartphone

With its square 4.5″ screen and a three-line physical keyboard, the Blackberry Passport stands out in a saturated smartphone market. But will it make Blackberry a household name again?

Built to be tough
BlackBerry Passport is built to be tough, with its one-piece, joint-less steel frame, which extends to the phone's interior.

But at 196 grams, BlackBerry Passport is heavier than the usual smartphone and its shape may take a while to get used to.

Blackberry fans will feel nostalgic over Blackberry Passport's QWERTY keyboard, which offers more typing accuracy than a touchscreen smartphone. BlackBerry's keyboard shortcuts are back as well.

The 5.04″ high, 3.56″ wide and 0.36″ thick BlackBerry Passport has edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass 3, a power button and headphone jack on top, a USB charging/data port at the bottom and volume/pause buttons on the right.

Display
The square 4.5″ display has a 1440 x 1440 resolution at 453 PPI. It displays more information than the usual smartphone screen. The display delivers crisp images and works well even in sunlight, and can be viewed from all angles.

Performance
Blackberry Passport is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 2.2 GHz Quad-Core CPUs and an Adreno 330, 450 MHz GPU, with 3 GB of RAM. 10 apps can be run simultaneously at the same time without slowing it down. It has a 32 GB built-in memory, which can be expanded to 128 GB through a microSD card.

Battery
Blackberry Passport has a 3450 mAH integrated non-removable battery. One charge is reportedly is equivalent to a 30-hour lifespan. Camera
The BlackBerry Passport has a 13 megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a 5-element f2.0 lens. BlackBerry Passport now has a panorama mode and a timer as well.

Media
BlackBerry Passport's speakerphone is among the clearest in the market, which makes it a practical tool during business teleconferences, or when listening to music in the gym. The Active Leak Compensation feature automatically adjusts the call volume based on the smartphone's proximity to your ear.

Software
The Blackberry Passport runs on BlackBerry 10.3. The Instant Action feature helps users manage messages with a just a click while the Advanced Interaction feature puts the phone on power saving mode or activates it, depending on what the user does.

Amazon Appstore offers more than 200,000 Android apps. However, any Google Play supported app won't work. Other features include the BlackBerry Assistant, which is similar to Apple's Siri, and BlackBerry Blend, which can be used to access e-mails, BBM, text, and other files, the phone on a Windows PC or Mac as well as on tablets.

The verdict
For users that value productivity and features like a physical QWERTY keyboards and the wide screen, then the BlackBerry Passport is a must-try.