So if you’ve seen the BlackBerry Passport, which launched back in September, the one thing that probably sticks out to you is the size.
An almost square device, the phone looks like it would be a monster to carry around. And, frankly, the demonstration that it was roughly the same size as a passport didn’t placate me as passports aren’t that small either.
BlackBerry chief executive John Chen shows a Canadian passport along with the Passport smartphone during an official launch event in Toronto, Sept. 24, 2014. REUTERS/Aaron Harris
At the launch, BlackBerry CEO John Chen and company showed that the Passport could easily fit in the inside pocket of a blazer. But I’m not a Bay Street businessman who wears a suit to work every day. I generally wear a golf shirt and pants and so it seemed that it would be considerably more uncomfortable to carry the Passport around.
Or at least, that’s what I thought. In fact, it fits reasonably well into the front pocket in my pants. Jeans could be an issue, but most men’s pants have big enough pockets.
While it is wider than most phones, the Passport isn’t actual that tall. With the dimensions 128 mm by 90.3 mm by 9.3 mm, it is actually shorter than my Galaxy S3, so it was less likely to stick out of the pocket. It even fit snugly in the back pocket, though I’ve never really understood people who carried their phones around like that.
A woman holds the Blackberry Passport smartphone during at a simultaneous launch event in London on Sept. 24, 2014. (AFP PHOTO/CARL COURT)
The phone’s width can make it a little awkward to hold in one hand. As my hands are large, I was able to cup one hand around it, but then trying to type with my thumb was difficult. But the phone’s width allows for a QWERTY keyboard, so it makes more sense to hold with two hands so you can type with both thumbs. And at 196 grams, it’s heavier than most cellphones, so it also gets a little cumbersome to hold in one hand after awhile.
The keys run across three rows so there’s not enough space for everyone. While your typing a fourth row appears at the bottom of the screen above the keys (usually numbers or punctuation) that can change as you type.
And there’s an option to bring up more virtual keys if the particular one you need isn’t there. It can take a little getting used to, switching between the physical and virtual keys, because of the difference in pressure needed to depress them. But if you spend a lot of time texting or writing e-mails on your phone, then the larger keyboard will be appreciated. It even includes a good predictive text engine which can help you type faster.
And the screen allows for more characters to appear in a single line, so it’s also easier to read e-mails on than many other phones.
A touchpad is also built into the keys so you don’t have to smudge up the screen to scroll or navigate apps.
The Passport comes with a rather impressive battery life. Its 3,450 mAh battery offers a charge of up to 25 hours, which makes it one of the longest lasting phones around. And it’s not hurting for specs either. It runs on a 2.2 GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU and 3 GB of RAM which also puts it in the top range for speed and memory. It only comes with 32 GB of internal storage but has a MicroSD slot which allows you to expand it by up to 128 GB.
The phone runs on BlackBerry OS 10.3 and if you haven’t used a BlackBerry 10 device before, it’s a relatively straightforward OS. The app menus are set up much the same way as Android but the interface is a little different. For example, to close an app, you swipe from the bottom and it will minimize into a grid where you can close the program. It’s kind of like the opposite of Windows 8 where you swipe from the top of the screen.
It also comes with the BlackBerry Hub which provides a sort of one-stop shop for all your notifications: e-mails, texts, calls, Twitter, Facebook, alerts etc. It’s a simple setup but it’s quite a useful way to keep track of what’s going on.
One of the main complaints with BlackBerry 10 in the past was the limited number of apps. BlackBerry World has a far smaller selection than the Apple App and Google Play stores. But back in June, BlackBerry announced the Amazon Appstore was coming to its OS and it comes preinstalled on the BlackBerry Passport.
While it doesn’t offer quite as many programs as Google Play, it does add roughly 240,000 apps to the collection. You can also download an independent APK (Android application package) and install it directly. (I tried this with Netflix as it is not offered in Amazon’s store and I had no issues with installing it.)
Although these apps are not specifically designed for BlackBerry 10, most of them work fine. Though sometimes they can display a little weird. The Passport’s square 4.5-inch diagonal in-cell IPS LCD touch display has an aspect ratio 1:1, so the full field-of-view for the apps may be cut off. There’s a button to letterbox the app so that it will look the same on the Passport as on a phone with a candybar form factor, but it doesn’t always work properly.
BlackBerry World also still exists for devs who want to make BlackBerry-specific apps. (Many of these would be more business-oriented enterprise apps that can take advantage of BlackBerry’s superior level on encryption.)
And business users can set up BlackBerry Blend so they can share their phone’s desktop with their tablet or computer.
Video and images are of a high quality as well. The screen has a 1,440×1,440 pixel resolution, though when it comes to video playback, you have to contend with the letterbox black bars when watching in fullscreen mode. This is especially noticeable with 16:9 videos as they have to be shrunk down significantly to fit the screen. But even standard definition videos have black bars as they have an aspect ratio of 4:3.
The phone has a rear 13 MP camera and a 2 MP front-facing one. You can shoot in any of the three ratios and the images on both cameras look decent. They can be a little grainy in lower light and the flash tends to wash out the colour, but it offers a good burst mode, face detection and a panorama mode which is a lot easier to use than many of the competitors’ models. Videos, similarly, look and sound decent.
The sound quality of phone calls is also relatively clean on both ends.
The Passport is, of course, the best BlackBerry currently available on the market. It’s a great device for texting, e-mail and social media with a superior battery life. It’s a reasonably good all-around device for those who don’t mind holding it with two hands. Though if you’re looking to mainly watch videos, because of the screen’s aspect ratio, you may want to look for a different phone.
The BlackBerry Passport is available through Bell, Rogers, Sasktel, Telus and BlackBerry’s own site. For a two-year plan, Telus offers the best price through Best Buy and Future Shop in a special deal running until Nov. 13 for $199.99. For no contract, the best price is $699 through BlackBerry’s site.
