At an event in Toronto, BlackBerry launched an unconventional smartphone “Passport” at a price of $599 for the unlocked version. According to the company, initially, just after the launch, the smartphone will be available through ShopBlackBerry.com and only for customers in Canada, Germany, France, the UK and the US. And within one year, BlackBerry would start selling the smartphone in more than 30 countries, including India, Saudi Arabia and the other parts of the Middle East, Singapore, Austria, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Venezuela, Philippines, Russia Slovakia, Spain, Romania, and Colombia.
This latest smartphone by BlackBerry is the first ever phone to have BlackBerry 10.3 OS onboard and features such as, BlackBerry Assistant and BlackBerry Hub with Instant Actions. And using BlackBerry 10.3 Os, users will also be able to browse through Amazon’s App Store for Android and access to as many as 24,000 apps.
The most intriguing aspect about BlackBerry Passport is that it includes 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor. It also equips Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB of RAM and 32 GB of built-in storage capacity, which can be easily expanded to 128GB. Another prime highlight of the smartphone is its 13-MP rear OIS camera and 2-MP front camera. As far as the battery life of the phone is concerned, it will run up to 30 hours.
The phone measures 128×90.1×9.3mm and boast different connectivity options, including Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, Micro-USB + Micro-HDMI via SlimPort, USB OTG, NFC, GPS, DLNA, Glonass, GPRS/ EDGE, 3G, and 4G LTE. The BlackBerry Passport features a Nano-SIM card slot too.
As far as the display of the smartphone is concerned, it sports 4.5-inch 1440×1440 pixel resolution IPS LCD display with 453ppi. And using its three-line hardware keyboard having capacitive touch sensitivity, users can easily perform gestures, browse through lists and choose auto-complete recommendations.