BlackBerry Passport
BlackBerry Passport
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BlackBerry Passport

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BlackBerry Passport

The BlackBerry Passport is a phablet developed by BlackBerry Limited. Officially released on September 24, 2014, the Passport is inspired by its namesake and incorporates features designed to make the device attractive to enterprise users, such as a unique square-shaped display measuring 4.5 inches diagonally, a compact physical keyboard with touchpad gestures, and the latest release of the company's BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Reception to the Passport was mixed; critics praised the quality of the device's design, screen, and keyboard for meeting the company's goals of creating a business-oriented device, along with an improved application selection through the integration of Amazon's Appstore for Android (taking advantage of the Android software support provided by BlackBerry 10) alongside BlackBerry's own store for native software. Criticism of the Passport was focused primarily on its irregular form factor in comparison to other phablets, making the device difficult to carry and use one-handed due to its increased width, while its keyboard was also panned for having an irregular layout in comparison to past BlackBerry devices.

In January 2014, BlackBerry Limited's new CEO John Chen indicated that, following the unsuccessful launch of BlackBerry 10 and its accompanying, consumer-oriented touchscreen devices (such as the BlackBerry Z10), along with the company's major loss of market share to competing smartphones such as Android devices and the iPhone line, the company planned to shift its focus back towards the enterprise market as part of its restructuring plan, and primarily manufacture phones that feature physical keyboards. In June 2014, Chen publicly teased two of the company's upcoming models, the BlackBerry Passport—a phablet with a square display, along with a successor to the Q10 known as the BlackBerry Classic, incorporating the array of navigation keys featured on past BlackBerry OS devices.

The company's return to a business-oriented focus influenced the design and functionality of the Passport; the overall design of the device was designed to evoke a similar form to its namesake, "a familiar and universal symbol of mobility". BlackBerry also touted that the use of a square-shaped, 4.5-inch display, rather than the rectangular 16:9 displays of other smartphones, in combination with its physical keyboard, would provide more room on-screen for business-oriented tasks such as document editing, image viewing (such as architectural schematics and x-rays), and web browsing. The company also noted that the increased width of the display would allow the Passport to show 60 characters per line of text, nearing a recommended measure for books at 66 per line.

Development of the Passport began in 2013; while even Chen himself was hesitant about the device due to its unusual form factor, he decided to allow continued development of the Passport, believing that it carried unique design qualities in comparison to other, competing smartphones. BlackBerry officially released the Passport on September 24, 2014 during a press event featuring retired NHL player Wayne Gretzky; describing the device as being aimed towards "power professionals" who are "achievement oriented" and "highly productive", Chen remarked that the goals of the Passport were to "drive productivity" and "break through the sea of rectangular-screen, all-touch devices." Chen also joked about Apple's recent "bendgate" incident during the presentation, remarking that unlike the iPhone 6, "bending [the Passport] needs a little effort."

BlackBerry announced plans to release the Passport in over 30 countries by the end of 2014; following the event, unlocked models of the Passport were made available for purchase on BlackBerry's website in Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Telus in Canada and AT&T in the United States were announced as the first two North American carriers to offer the Passport.

The BlackBerry Passport has dimensions similar to that of an international passport, and incorporates a steel frame with matte plastic as part of its design. The device utilizes a compact variation of BlackBerry's traditional physical keyboard design, using a modified layout with three rows and a small spacebar located in the middle of the bottom row alongside the remaining letters. Functions previously found on the fourth row (such as symbols and the Shift key) are accessible through a context-sensitive on-screen toolbar. The keyboard is also touch-sensitive; acting as a touchpad, it can register sliding gestures across its keys for scrolling, text selection, word deletion, and autocomplete suggestions.

The Passport features a square-shaped 4.5-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 1440×1440, made by JDI (Japan Display Inc.), codenamed panorama, as opposed to a 16:9 display, making the Passport considerably wider than other phablets in its class. The Passport includes a quad-core, 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 system-on-chip with 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of expandable, internal storage, along with a non-removable 3450 mAh battery rated for at least 30 hours of mixed usage. The Passport also includes a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with optical image stabilization, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The phone was shipped with 5 different modules, one of them made by LG Innotek (LG-IT) the others are made by Samsung Electro-Mechanics (Samco). During phone calls, the Passport can measure ambient noise using a microphone in its earpiece, which can then be used to automatically adjust call volume.

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