BlackBerry Passport smartphone launched with 4.5-Inch square display

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With its touch display and physical square keyboard reorganized in three rows, the BlackBerry Passport is moving away from standards of the genre but wants to offer the best of the BlackBerry 10 for professionals.

The smartphone BlackBerry Passport is a reminder that the BlackBerry maker is still one manufacturer of mobile devices, even more frankly now turning to the corporate market. After mixed sales for models under BlackBerry 10, it is the culmination of the new strategy of CEO John Chen, seeking to provide a optimized mobility solution for employees on the move.

And away from the usual black rectangle in smartphones, it offers a unique screen consisting of a compact smartphone with a square touch display with high resolution of 1440 x 1440 pixels with a physical keyboard arranged in three rows instead of the usual four rows.

BlackBerry states that they wanted to design a smartphone dedicated for professionals and not bigger than a real passport which uses the same dimensions. The smartphone screen should facilitate consultation of the email and web or editing documents on the move.

The Canadian group claims that the keyboard of BlackBerry Passport is nearly four times more accurate than virtual keyboards of BlackBerry 10 smartphones and provides a tactile feature that makes it an extension of the display located above allowing to perform touch gestures.

It takes advantage of the latest OS version of the platform, BlackBerry 10.3, associated with the new BlackBerry Blend application and portal Amazon Appstore, in addition to BlackBerry World portal. Note also the presence of BlackBerry wizard, capable of responding to requests in natural language and displaying relevant contextual information.

The BlackBerry Passport features a set of four microphones with BlackBerry Natural Sound technology for more immersive conversations. As for characteristics, there is a square display measuring 4.5 inches and 9.3 mm to 196 grams.

It benefits as expected of a Snapdragon 800 quadcore processor and comes with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage space; expandable to a microSD memory card. The onboard battery has a capacity of 3450 mAh and promises up to 18 hours of talk time and 12 hours of video playback.

On the back, there is a 13 megapixel camera with image stabilization and LED flash, while in front, a 2-megapixel camera is present for video conferencing. BlackBerry Passport has support for 4G LTE, WiFi (WiFi Direct, Miracast), Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio and it has a GPS module as well.

The BlackBerry Passport is available from today at a price of €649, which puts it in the premium segment.