BlackBerry Unveils Its Square-shaped BlackBerry Passport Smartphone

dayo ajayi

July 9, 2014 2:41 PM

"We’ve been living in a rectangular smartphone design world for quite some time which perhaps limits innovations...The BlackBerry Passport offers a unique 4.5” inch square screen with full HD capabilities offering an even better viewing experience because of the screen’s width"...

‘Just as a passport is the universal symbol of mobility and was the inspiration for the size and form factor of this device, your BlackBerry Passport becomes your ticket to open new doors of opportunity.’ The Passport is expected to go on sale in September, and it combines a large touchscreen with a physical keyboard.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen first revealed the square phone during the Canadian company's annual general meeting last month.

Further details were unveiled by Matt Young on the Inside BlackBerry blog yesterday. ‘Consider how IMAX movies begin with the screens set to a more traditional 16:9 aspect ratio projection for conventional movie trailers, before expanding to their true dimensions.

'The Passport is like the IMAX of productivity, and you don’t have to sacrifice screen real estate, vertically or horizontally.'

It is unclear how comfortable the phone would be to hold, when making a call for example, and BlackBerry has not released any details about the price.

The BlackBerry blog post does, however indict that Passport's keyboard and wide display are very much aimed at business customers — from architects to medical professionals and finance-types. In short, businesspeople that were once its core constituency but have since largely moved onto Apple, and to a lesser extent, Android devices.however, position the device more towards businesses than consumers.

Most rectangular smartphones show approximately 40 characters per line, while the BlackBerry Passport is said to show 60 characters.

This makes the Passport ‘the ideal device for reading e-books, viewing documents and browsing the web.’

It also solves the problem of having to switch between landscape and portrait mode when taking a photo or filming a video.

‘The BlackBerry Passport will take you to new places on the best business trip you’ve ever had. We want you to imagine the possibilities', Young concluded.

dayo ajayi