The BlackBerry Passport is here, is square, get used to it.
It takes guts to, well, try to reinvent the wheel in a market as crowded and competitive as mobile, particularly when your financials are hurting as badly as BlackBerry’s. At the same time, the once mighty Canadian OEM had little choice but to gamble whatever’s left of its reputation on something wholly different from standard iPhones or Samsung Galaxy handhelds.
Enter the Passport, a high-end smartphone eerily similar to… a paper passport. Not only does the thing go the BB-familiar hybrid route once again, incorporating both a touchscreen and physical QWERTY keyboard, but it does so in a perfectly square, 1:1 aspect ratio form factor.
Crazy? Visionary? Maybe not crazy enough to bring back BlackBerry’s lost mojo and relevance? Guess we’ll find out pretty soon, as CEO Jon Chen, who’s been in charge of Passport’s buildup for months now, just confirmed the device shall debut on US store shelves this Wednesday.
September 24, that’s right, or roughly 24 hours away at the time of this writing. The good news doesn’t stop there, assuming a few hardcore BlackBerry aficionados are still standing, with the Passport poised to undercut most rivaling flagship phones price-wise.
While we wouldn’t exactly call the boxy fella affordable, it’s clearly on the cheap side compared to Apple’s new iPhones or Samsung’s freshly unveiled Galaxy Note 4. Or the Galaxy S5, for that matter.
Yes, it’s appraised at $599 contract-free, in a (desperate) attempt to “get the market interested”. No official word on any of America’s big four carriers getting a stab at a subsidized Passport, although there have been rumors floating around on a possible unlikely BB – T-Mo partnership.
And if the two can bury the hatchet for the greater good, it’s safe to presume other networks will nab a piece of the action as well before long. At the end of the day, why shouldn’t they? Sure, the Passport looks, um, unconventional.
But enterprise users may not care all that much, being instead swept off their feet by the phone’s productivity and versatility. And let’s not forget oomph, since a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chip is reportedly found beneath the hood, alongside 3 gigs of RAM and a beefy 3,450 mAh battery.
The touch-sensitive IPS LCD panel is a whopper too, boasting 1,440 x 1,440 pixels resolution, and the 13 MP rear-facing camera is… enough. Enough for $600 outright, and probably enough for $100 with contracts. Take note, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint.
Sources: Phone Arena , The Wall Street Journal
Read More: http://ift.tt/1rkDVL4
It takes guts to, well, try to reinvent the wheel in a market as crowded and competitive as mobile, particularly when your financials are hurting as badly as BlackBerry’s. At the same time, the once mighty Canadian OEM had little choice but to gamble whatever’s left of its reputation on something wholly different from standard iPhones or Samsung Galaxy handhelds.
Enter the Passport, a high-end smartphone eerily similar to… a paper passport. Not only does the thing go the BB-familiar hybrid route once again, incorporating both a touchscreen and physical QWERTY keyboard, but it does so in a perfectly square, 1:1 aspect ratio form factor.
Crazy? Visionary? Maybe not crazy enough to bring back BlackBerry’s lost mojo and relevance? Guess we’ll find out pretty soon, as CEO Jon Chen, who’s been in charge of Passport’s buildup for months now, just confirmed the device shall debut on US store shelves this Wednesday.
September 24, that’s right, or roughly 24 hours away at the time of this writing. The good news doesn’t stop there, assuming a few hardcore BlackBerry aficionados are still standing, with the Passport poised to undercut most rivaling flagship phones price-wise.
While we wouldn’t exactly call the boxy fella affordable, it’s clearly on the cheap side compared to Apple’s new iPhones or Samsung’s freshly unveiled Galaxy Note 4. Or the Galaxy S5, for that matter.
Yes, it’s appraised at $599 contract-free, in a (desperate) attempt to “get the market interested”. No official word on any of America’s big four carriers getting a stab at a subsidized Passport, although there have been rumors floating around on a possible unlikely BB – T-Mo partnership.
And if the two can bury the hatchet for the greater good, it’s safe to presume other networks will nab a piece of the action as well before long. At the end of the day, why shouldn’t they? Sure, the Passport looks, um, unconventional.
But enterprise users may not care all that much, being instead swept off their feet by the phone’s productivity and versatility. And let’s not forget oomph, since a quad-core Snapdragon 800 chip is reportedly found beneath the hood, alongside 3 gigs of RAM and a beefy 3,450 mAh battery.
The touch-sensitive IPS LCD panel is a whopper too, boasting 1,440 x 1,440 pixels resolution, and the 13 MP rear-facing camera is… enough. Enough for $600 outright, and probably enough for $100 with contracts. Take note, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint.
Sources: Phone Arena , The Wall Street Journal
Read More: http://ift.tt/1rkDVL4
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