Blackberry Passport is indeed a beautiful phone to behold . Canadian manufacturer BlackBerry looks to bring its no-nonsense smartphone approach in a form factor that is...unusual, to say the least. It's a company that's no stranger lately to being in the red for quarters on end and the Passport is yet another attempt by BlackBerry to regain its identity (and market share) in a cutthroat industry that's dominated by Android.
Even from a distance, it's apparent that the Passport is a device that's different for a reason. First, the company failed to market a "traditional" smartphone with the otherwise solid BlackBerry Z30. The BlackBerry Q5 QWERTY messenger wasn't any more successful as a return to the bread-and-butter. Now, the Passport hopes to strike gold with a formula that's the best of both worlds while being bound to neither.
The Passport certainly carries a spec sheet to put performance buffs at ease. With a Quad-core 2.26GHz Snapdragon 801 chip and 3GB of RAM, it's easily the most robust BlackBerry smartphone to date. The 4.5-inch square display is also of an impressive 1440 x 1440px, which results in an excellent 453ppi. Here's what else it brings to the table:
Key features
4.5" 16M-color IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen of 1440 x 1440px
Quad-core 2.26 GHz Krait 400, 3GB RAM, Adreno 330
13 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection and Time Shift, HDR, LED flash, 2MP front facing camera
FullHD (1080p) video recording at 60fps; 720p recording with front-facing camera
32GB storage, microSD card slot up to 128GB; built-in Dropbox and Box integration
Unique touch-enabled 3-row QWERTY keyboard with hardware keys
Stereo speakers
Ability to run Android apps (via the Amazon AppStore or sideloading)
BlackBerry 10.3 OS with Virtual Assistant
3,450mAh battery
