During BlackBerry's quarterly earnings report, CEO John Chen finally unveiled the company's next "big" smartphone, the BlackBerry Passport. The previous rumors that we had earlier about a phone codenamed "Windermere," actually is, Passport.
Apart from Passport, BlackBerry also unveiled the BlackBerry Classic which has been known as BlackBerry Q20 till now. The smartphone is also expected to run BlackBerry 10.3.1 OS which will also be available to all the current BlackBerry 10 smartphones. These smartphones were expected to be launched alongside BlackBerry Z3 which is expected to launch in India soon.
BlackBerry has gone with its conventional physical QWERTY keypads on both the phones even though users have been demanding an on-screen keyboard. Passport is expected to be the flagship of the company for this year and looking at the pictures, it actually does look like a passport.
An important feature to point out here is that the keypad on BlackBerry Passport lacks punctuation and numeric keys. But according to PhoneArena, users will be able to swipe over the keys for additional functions. One more interesting thing to note about the Passport is the position of the spacebar – which has been placed between the "V" and the "B" keys of the keyboard.
Classic on the hand, will have the "classic" BlackBerry keyboard with all the functions and buttons.
Now coming to the main attraction of BlackBerry Passport. The smartphone is quite oddly shaped and the company expects it to change things around. The Passport has a 4.5-inch display with a 1440×1440 resolution which makes it a square and quite unlike the everyday rectangular screens that we see on almost every smartphone. But still, BlackBerry isn't new to the square screens on its smartphones – BlackBerry Q10 came with a square shaped display.
What makes the Passport stand out even more is the display size – 4.5" which is quite big for a squarish display. This makes the smartphone stand quite wide at 3.18-inches which makes it even broader than Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 (2.79-inches).
BlackBerry has also entered a deal with Amazon recently through which Passport users will get access to Android apps sold on Amazon App Store. But one thing that remains a secret is the way through which BlackBerry will customize these apps to run on a square screen with a 1:1 aspect ratio. Guess we will have to wait till September to see all the Android apps in action on the screen of Passport.
Even though BlackBerry hasn't confirmed or released an official specs-preview, rumors point that the BlackBerry Passport will run a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB of RAM. The smartphone is expected to have a 3450mAh battery.
BlackBerry has said that Passport will be launched at a UK event in September. CEO John Chen also announced that BBM for Windows Phone will be launched in July.
Source: BlackBerry
Via: SlashGear