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Introducing the BlackBerry Passport – a square BlackBerry phablet

Callum Tennent
June 20, 2014

Just when you thought you’d seen it all from BlackBerry, they come up with yet another weird and (maybe) wonderful device. The BlackBerry Passport is its name, and it’s probably the most quintessentially ‘BlackBerry’ device you’ve ever seen.

It’s most obvious feature is its square display. Yep, completely square – 1440 x 1440 pixels in resolution, 4.5 inches diagonally. This big square screen means that the Passport is a whopping 3.18 inches wide. That’s even wider than the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch display. Its weird dimensions mean that the Passport can boast a highly impressive 452 PPI, though.

BlackBerry - Passport

As you might expect from BB, there’s also a physical QWERTY keyboard located at the bottom of the handset, so loyalists will most likely be pleased. Like the device itself, the keys are a lot more square than those found on older BlackBerry devices.

The Passport’s internal specs are just as impressive as its display. It runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core chipset, pumping out 2.3 GHz of power. There’s also 3GB of RAM and a rather sizeable 3,450 mAh.

BlackBerry - Passport front and back

It’s an interesting device, with some very interesting specifications. However the issue for consumers in recent times regarding BB has not so much been a hardware-based one, but software based. With a square display, BlackBerry’s already limited App World will surely grow even smaller – not to mention the affect this will have on the Android apps which the BB10 OS is capable of running.

It’s pretty safe to say that with BlackBerry desperately searching for a saviour, the Passport probably won’t be it. But it does show that BlackBerry is still willing to try something a little different in an attempt to diversify its catalogue and bring it up to technological par with the rest of the market.

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About the Author

Callum Tennent

International playboy/tech journalist.

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