BlackBerry Passport: Preview and specifications

BlackBerry is pushing hard to stay in the smartphone race. However, their main concentration is towards the business and enterprise users since BlackBerry is known for having highly secure communication servers for their handhelds.

With the launch of the Z10, BlackBerry suffered in the market due to high prices. However, later, the launch of newer models at lower prices, especially the Z3, BlackBerry is claiming their ground space.

Now the brand is focussing on usability and wants to retain the much preferred physical QERTY keyboard. The Q series are known for their QWERTY keyboard and BlackBerry will keep this trend alive on most of their handsets.

BlackBerry unveiled their new smartphone, the Passport, on 24th September in Toronto, Canada. The Passport is one of the first smartphones in the world to feature a completely square display screen. The device is slim and the size of a passport. Unlike most smartphones, which have a rectangle display, BlackBerry has a different reason to put a square display on their flagship.

The BlackBerry Passport features a 4.5-inch square IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1440x1440 pixels and is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The Passport runs on BlackBerry OS 10.3 and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor featuring a quad-core processor clocked at 2.26GHz and an Adreno 330 graphics processor with 3GB of RAM. The rear camera is a 13MP with an LED flash, while the front camera has a 2MP sensor.

An internal storage of 32GB has been provided, which can be further expanded up to 64GB using a microSD card. Connectivity options include the standard 3G, LTE, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, NFC, Bluetooth, GPS and GLONASS. The battery fuelling the Passport is a non-removable 3450 mAh Li-ion and the manufacturer claims you can get up to 30 hours of battery life. Lastly, the BB handset uses a single nano-SIM. The BlackBerry Passport is 9.3mm thick and weighs 194 grams