Blackberry officially launched an unconventional, square smartphone dubbed the Passport on Wednesday, and couldn't resist taking a jab at the world's most popular phone - the iPhone 6. Continuing its strategy to arm mobile professionals with devices, BlackBerry Limited today launched the BlackBerry Passport. The device is featuring a a 4.5 square screen with a 1:1 aspect ratio, 1440x1440 pixel (453 dpi) HD display and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for added strength. It also comes with a new QWERTY touch-enabled keyboard and remains portable enough to tuck into pockets.

The BlackBerry Passport includes the first touch-enabled keyboard with gestures that make typing, editing and navigating more efficient. The Passport's new QWERTY keyboard is almost four times more accurate than BlackBerry 10 virtual keyboards - the error rate is on average 74% lower.

Its 3450 mAh battery is the largest among the top selling smartphones and phablets and, when tested against a very active user, provides up to 30 hours of mixed use.

The device is powered by a a Quad Core 2.2 GHZ Processor, 3 GB RAM, 13 MP OIS rear camera and 32 GB memory. It also comes with powerful speakers and a quad microphone system. BlackBerry Natural Sound Technology is built in to adapt Wi-Fi and cellular call sound depending upon phone position and background noise, automatically adjusting volume so you don't have to.

The BlackBerry Passport along with Porsche Design P?9983 smartphone from BlackBerry, are the first devices to launch on BlackBerry's latest OS platform, BlackBerry 10.3. They come preloaded with new features including BlackBerry Blend and BlackBerry Assistant, as well as the BlackBerry World storefront and Amazon Appstore, offering access to apps.

BlackBerry Blend brings messaging and content that is on your BlackBerry smartphone to your computer and tablet. You can get instant message notifications, read and respond to your work and personal email, BBM or text messages, and access your documents, calendar, contacts and media in real time on whatever device you are on, powered by your BlackBerry. BlackBerry Blend is being introduced on the BlackBerry Passport and will work across desktop operating systems, including Mac OS X 10.7 +, Windows 7+ and Android tablets running Android 4.4+ via cellular, USB or Wi-Fi connections. BlackBerry is also working to bring the Blend experience on other tablets soon. The downloadable version of BlackBerry Blend for Macs and PCs is available today at www.BlackBerry.com/Blend, on the Apple App Store for iPad tablets, or via the Google Play Store for Android tablets.

The BlackBerry Assistant is BlackBerry's first digital assistant and can be used with voice and text commands to help users manage work and personal email, contacts, calendar and other native BlackBerry 10 applications. It intelligently determines how to respond to you based on how you interact with it - if you type, it responds silently, if you speak, it speaks back and if you activate over Bluetooth, it speaks back with additional context because it assumes you might not have access to the screen.

The BlackBerry Passport is now available around the world and online through ShopBlackBerry.com and Amazon.com (unlocked).

Introductory Offer Price

• Canada - $699
• France - €649
• Germany - €649
• UK - £529
• USA - $599
  

In addition, BlackBerry Passport will be also offered with a contract for around US$249, though the exact price will vary by partner.

BlackBerry, introducing its new Passport device for business customers today, saw an opening emerge from user complaints that the newest Apple iPhones get bent and warped in people?s pockets.

"I would challenge you guys to bend our Passport," John Chen, Blackberry?s chief executive officer, said at an event today in Toronto.

The reports of bending iPhones follow record demand for the devices, with more than 10 million sold in their debut last weekend. At the fan site MacRumors, a member named hanzoh wrote this week that the phone was "slightly bent after 2 days" in a front suit pocket. Numerous other iPhone owners reported similar concerns on the site.

Apple hasn't commented on the reports.

BlackBerry is set also to report its second-quarter results on Friday and within a couple of months it is also expected to launch the long-awaited BlackBerry Classic, which bears similarities to its once wildly popular Bold smartphone.

The company hopes the Classic and the launch of its new mobile device management system - BlackBerry Enterprise Service 12 (BES12) - will help it claw back ground ceded to rivals in both the hardware and services market.

The BES 12 platform will allow IT managers at large companies and government agencies to not only manage and secure BlackBerry devices, but also manage Windows-based devices, and more easily administer Android and iOS devices.

Blackberry Passport Specs

• Height 128 mm / 5.04 in
• Width 90.3 mm / 3.56 in
• Depth 9.3 mm / 0.36 in
• 196g / 6.91 oz

• All-touch screen, with intuitive gesture based navigation
• Touch-enabled keyboard

• Capacitive touch 3-row BlackBerry Keyboard, featuring contextual auto-correction, next-word prediction and a personalised learning engine that gets to know the way you type
• Dedicated keys: Volume Up/Down, Mute, Lock (for Power On/Off)
• Display:
  • 1440 x 1440 resolution
  • 24-bit colour depth
• Screen size
• 4.5" diagonal
• 1:1 aspect ratio
• Operating system: BlackBerry 10 OS

• BlackBerry Blend software to bring the power of your BlackBerry smartphone to your computer and tablet
• BlackBerry Link software for your computer to enable synchronization of data and media

• Processor
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 with 2.2GHz Quad-Core CPUs (MSM8974-AA)
  • Adreno 330, 450MHz GPU
• Memory
  • 3 GB RAM
  • 32 GB Flash
• Expandable memory: Removable microSD memory card?slot located under back cover (Up to 128 GB)USB
• Ports: USB 2.0 high speed port-allows charging and data synchronization of the device with a USB cable
• Battery: 3450mAH integrated non-removable battery
• Battery Life:
  • Up to 18 hours GSM talk time
  • Up to 18 days GSM standby time
  • Up to 23 hours UMTS talk time
  • Up to 18.5 days UMTS standby time
  • Up to 84 hours audio playback
  • Up to 12 hours video playback
• Rear camera
  • 13 megapixel auto-focus camera
  • Optical image stabilization (OIS)
  • 5-element f2.0 lens
  • Back Side Illumination
  • LED flash, continuous and touch to focus, image stabilization
  • 5x digital zoom
  • 6DOF video stabilization
  • 1080p HD video recording at 60fps
• Front camera
  • 2MP fixed-focus
  • Image and video stabilization
  • 3x digital zoom
  • 720p HD video recording
• Image formats: BMP, WBMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, SGI, TGAAudio & video formats: 3GP, 3GP2, M4A, M4V, MOV, MP4, MKV, MPEG-4, AVI, ASF, WMV, WMA, MP3, MKA, AAC, AMR, F4V, WAV, MP2PS, MP2TS, AWB, OGG, FLACAudio & video encoding/decoding: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, AAC-LC, AAC+, eAAC, MP3, PCM, Xvid, AMR-NB, WMA 9/10, WMA10 professional, WMA-LL, VC-1, VP6, SPARK, PCM, MPEG-2, MJPEG (mov), AC-3, AMR-WB, QCELP, FLAC, VOBSUB, VORBISPre-loaded apps
• Multimedia: Music, Videos, Pictures, Camera, Picture Editor, Story Maker
• Productivity: BlackBerry Hub (Email and Social Messaging), Universal Search, Calendar, Contacts, Browser, Text Messaging, Clock, Calculator, Documents To Go, Print To Go, File Manager, Adobe Reader, BlackBerry Remember (memos /tasks)
• Other: Phone, BBM (Voice and Video), BlackBerry World, Facebook³, Twitter³, LinkedIn³, Games, YouTube, Maps/Navigation, Smart Tags (NFC), Setup, Help

• Password protection, screen lock, and sleep mode
• Hands-free headset capable
• Bluetooth headset capable
• Integrated hands-free speakerphone
• Stereo

• Network bands:
  • FD-LTE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 20 (2100/1900/1800/1700/850/2600/900/700/700/800 MHz)
  • HSPA+ 1, 2, 4, 5/6, 8 (2100/1900/1700/850/900 MHz)
  • Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• Wi-Fi
  • 802.11 b/g/n for 2.4GHz
  • 802.11 a/n for 5GHz
  • 802.11 ac for 5GHz
  • 4G Mobile Hotspot
  • Wi-Fi Direct
  • Miracast

• FM Radio: FM Radio receive (headset as antenna)
• Bluetooth: (LE) GPS

• Assisted, Autonomous and Simultaneous GPS
• Preloaded with BlackBerry Maps application and for e911 capabilities
• Support for User Plane and Control Plane GPS

• NFC: BlackBerry Tag with NFC technology enables communication between BlackBerry smartphones and other NFC-enabled devices with a tap

• Advanced Sensors
  • Accelerometer
  • Magnetometer
  • Gyroscope
  • Time of Flight (ToF)
  • Ambient light

 

• BlackBerry Screen Reader, for customers with vision loss BlackBerry Magnify, for customers with partial vision Face-to-face video chat with BBM Video Voice Control for sending messages, placing calls, search and more Adjustable screen brightness, scalable fonts Closed Captioning Support
• Rated for Hearing Aids: M4