Blackberry Passport is a much wide rectangular shaped smartphone which looks totally different. It’s about the shape of a US passport, featuring a touchscreen and a refurbished physical QWERTY keyboard. Blackberry has been known for producing powerful physical keyboard smartphones; we’ve seen the earlier blackberry Q5 and Q10, but the Blackberry passport is way out of the league and a surprise to lovers of physical keyboard devices, they never saw it coming.
Blackberry Passport – Design
Almost every smartphone is rectangular in shape, but the Blackberry passport got it a little wider, it’s actually 3.5 inches wide which makes it wider than some phablets such as the iPhone 6 plus and it’s confirmed to be very awkward to hold.
With a 4.5 inch display and a redesigned physical keyboard it weighs 194 grams which i consider light (it’s lighter than it looks). Blackberry passport has straight edges just as the blackberry Z3 with a sturdy stainless steel frame which makes it classic, it would be available in black, white colors.
The overall design of Blackberry passport is no doubt very weird and that makes it unique. After a little research i was able to discover the only device similar to the Blackberry passport, LG VU 3, but it doesn’t feature a physical keyboard. Let’s compare the two below.
Display And Camera
Blackberry passport features a square 4.5 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 1440 X 1440 pixels resolution (453 pixels per inch), protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display is brilliant enough and much wide, showing up to 60 characters on each line. That’s +20 characters compared to other smartphones. However, it still fits in the pocket.
Looking at the camera of Blackberry passport, it got me totally surprised. A 13-megapixels camera (4128 X 3096), that’s one of the best from blackberry. But it seems the camera shutter sound can’t be disabled. The front camera is at 2-megapixels with up to 720p HD video recording.
The All New Keyboard
Right from the beginning, blackberry was well known for producing physical keyboard smartphones and they were awesome at it. They got all keyboard fans excited with the introduction of the blackberry Q5 and Q10 which are said to be the best physical QWERTY keyboard devices. But it looks like the rectangular shaped smartphone will be taking over as it features a premium 3-row physical keyboard.
The keyboard is touch-sensitive and suggests up to three words as you type. With new features introduced, you’ll require a little practice before typing like a pro on blackberry passport.
Blackberry Passport – General Performance
Running a 2.26GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 CPU with 3GB RAM size, we are looking at a super-fast performance here. The ROM is at 32GB with up to 128GB microSD extension capacity. It operates on the new blackberry 10.3 OS, enabling you successfully download and enjoy Android apps from the pre-loaded Amazon app store.
Internet And Connectivity
The blackberry passport requires only a single Nano-SIM and a super-speed internet wasn’t left out. It provides up to 150mbps of download speed on 4G connectivity and up to 42mbps on the backup HSPA+. For connectivity purposes we have Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, NFC.
Battery
It’s expected to offer up to 18 hours on talktime and 12 hours video playback. I’ve read quite a lot of good testimonies regarding the battery of the BB passport, but that’s what we should expect from a 3450mAh battery. The battery is non-removable.
Blackberry Passport Specs
- Weight: 194 grams
- Dimensions: 128 X 90.3 X 9.3 mm
- Display: 4.5 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 1440 X 1440 pixels
- Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
- Physical QWERTY keyboard
- Camera: 13-megapixels, LED flash, autofocus, HDR, image stabilization, face detection, geo-tagging
- Front camera: 2-megapixels
- Operating system: Blackberry 10.3 OS
- Processor: 2.2GHz Quad-core, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800
- RAM: 3GB
- Memory capacity: 32GB built-in memory (ROM), up to 128GB on memory card
- Battery: Non-removable 3450mAh battery
- SIM: Single Nano-SIM
- Networks: 2G, 3G, 4G LTE
- GPRS/EDGE
- Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, LE
- USB 2.0
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi direct, Wi-Fi hotspot, dual-band, DLNA
- NFC
- GPS: A-GPS, GLONASS
- Blackberry Maps
- Messaging: BBM 6, SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
- Android Apps via Amazon App store
- Java MIDP 2.1
- FM Radio with RDS
- Blackberry Assistant
- Video player: MP4, DivX, XviD, WMV, H.263, H.264
- Audio player: MP3, WMA, WAV, eAAC+, FLAC
- Photo viewer And Editor
- Video editor
- Colors: Black, White