The BlackBerry Passport is a smartphone with a 4.5 inch, 1440 x 1440 pixel touchscreen display and a built-in QWERTY keyboard below the screen. It’s kind of a funny looking phone and it’s way wider than most smartphones. But BlackBerry thinks it’s also more useful than most smartphones.

The Passport should go on sale this fall. But someone at UK retailer Carphone Warehouse jumped the gun and uploaded a promotional video to YouTube a bit early.

It’s been removed, but the internet being what it is, someone has already re-uploaded a copy.

According to the overview, the wide keyboard makes typing with you thumbs easier than on other phones. At 1440 pixels wide, the screen is also wider than most, which gives you more room to view email messages or other content without turning your phone sideways.

In fact, since the screen is square, there’s pretty much no reason you’d ever need to rotate the phone.

The video also shows off a few features we’ve already heard about including the BlackBerry Assistant digital voice assist feature and the touch-sensitive keyboard area which lets you do things like delete words by swiping across the keys.

Still, the phone does look awfully big when it’s held in one hand.

via BGR and CrackBerry

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,544 other subscribers

6 replies on “Take a closer look at BlackBerry Passport square(ish) smartphone (video)”

  1. Sweet I ABSOLUTELY want one…running android.

    Seriously though I would pay a premium for this unique form factor with that awesome Qwerty keyboard. Instead Android manufacturers continue to produce boring ass “flagship” 5 inch cookie cutter designs. When you look around the Android manufacturer marketplace, as much as it pains me to say it, the only risky form-factor in recent memory is the Samsung Note series, and that for what is otherwise it completely soulless and uninspiring company in my opinion. The Note series was a wonderful success. Why do more companies not try to take the risk and design something truly unique like this? Are they afraid they’re gonna lose their place at the back of the line in market share?

    1. There’s back of the line and then there’s the bottomless pit behind the back of the line… Many of those companies with small market shares are barely holding on and it’s really up to the bigger companies to really innovate and try new things but they often go with what they know works and rarely risk anything if they can help it…

      Not that there have never been small companies willing to gamble on trying to be different but more often than not they fail and then are never heard from again, which only acts to discourage the other small companies from trying anything similar…

      Problem is small companies don’t have the resources to really push a new platform, and so often lack exposure for customers to even know they are available or have to initially limit availability to certain regions… Along with people generally being loyal to the big company products and the uncertainty in trying a product from a company you may never have heard of before, etc. and there’s little wonder why there hasn’t been much change in the market…

      Even well known companies like Blackberry have issues with the lack of trust from their years of not producing the best products… So even a great product from them now will be hard to push to anyone but their remaining loyal costumer base, which by latest reports has shrunk a lot by about 73% in just the last year…

      While even trying a known OS like Android doesn’t ensure anything… So it’s not really a market that’s easy to introduce changes to…

  2. Yea, a wee bit wide for pocket carry. If I always wore a suit I might see myself owning one, and business folk are a core BB demo. Ladies with purses won’t have a problem either so I can see a market for the form factor. The question is whether BB still has a reason to exist at all. And that is a really good question.

    1. The rumors I’ve heard thus far have been that it fits just fine in regular jeans/pants pockets. I look forward to trying it out 🙂

    2. Blackberry is certainly down, but not out yet. It’s a shame they had to be on the brink of collapse before they got serious about staging a comeback. I think with the inclusion of the Amazon App store on devices and great hardware like this, they at least have a shot.

Comments are closed.