BlackBerry is preparing to release what may be its weirdest smartphone ever. This year it’s already launched the Z3, and soon that will be joined by the BlackBerry Classic – an obvious throwback to the company’s glory days. But there’s another product making its way through the pipeline as well, and it’s a lot more blocky. BlackBerry is calling its third phone planned for fiscal year 2015 the Passport. We’ve never seen anything quite like it, and we’ll let you decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.
You know what? I kind of like this thing. It’s crazy, unconventional, and it certainly has charm. I’m very curious if I will ever manage to get to handle one – I have yet to even see a BlackBerry 10 device to begin with, sadly.
My job hooked me up with a Blackberry Q10. It has great battery life, but I haven’t really played with it all that much. As much as I love hardware keyboards, it’s really hard to type on this one to me. Bring back the slide keyboards!!
The BlackBerry Classic looks like the perfect phone. Looks like they added the dedicated call/end buttons back, and moved the screen to a taller 4:3 resolution instead of the Q10’s odd 1:1 ratio. Not being able to dial/hang up by feel is my only complaint with the Q10.
I’d love to have the Classic, if my carrier supported Blackberry phones. As it stands, I happen to greatly enjoy my carrier more than I would enjoy a new phone.
I prefer a wider screen like the Passport has instead of the nonsensical iPhone5 screen.
I loved the iPhone4 screen though, don’t know why Apple changed the screen ratio with 5… it’s so lame.
IMHO Blackberry made a point here. Interesting!!
My guess would be that Steve Jobs said no wider than 58mm because you wont be able to use the phone comfortably in one hand. And I would agree. The iPhone’s width would be the main reason for me to buy it. All those damn huge phones.
The Passport is obviously a business phone for corporate executives who send a lot of emails. It will fit perfectly in a suit pocket.
It will also be conspicuous on a boardroom conference table, which is equally important.
“Blackberry is still in business???”
Thanks for sharing your ignorance!
Tell me again how great BB has been doing financially in the last couple of years and how successfully their latest models have been.
Shares in Blackberry closed up 9.6% on $23m profit. That sounds a healthy direction to me.
Up 25% since Chen took over.
Doing a lot better than T-Mobile, it seems.
Thats good for them indeed. Seems finally they got some competent management. I am no longer surprised they’re still business.
Odd follow-up to your “still in business?” post given it is just days after they beat the street with a profitable quarter. They are certainly living in the shadow of their former glory but having more cash than you had the quarter before is a poor way to go out of business.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27924675
Personally, I think they are making many smart moves and both their enterprise MDM and QNX are tremendous assets regardless of the handsets business. They could continue to surprise. Only time will tell…
With 3.1 Billion in cash and solid enterprise presence I don’t think there was any chance of them going out of business (given the right management).
Resting on your laurels and banking on past success is not a great business strategy. Unfortunately that seems to have been their strategy for a long time now.
It looks like they may have huge profits from QNX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX .
Now we have to figure out which word does not mean what you think it does: “huge” or “profits.”
And it seems to be Apple’s strategy too now that Steve Jobs is no longer around.
It’s an odd shape, but has a nice big screen and the hardware keyboard, which can be at odds with each other – give up screen size for a keyboard, or increase screen size and shrink the keyboard? I like it because it is unconventional, getting away from the trend of many smartphones looking alike. As a Z10 user who has experienced the improvements to BB10 from (almost) day one, I suspect BB10 will work quite nicely on the Passport.
Ive handled a couple of devices, they are well built and the OS is really good, i like the swipe actions on the different sides of the screen to bring up different information, makes it very easy to use with one hand.
The trouble is that it’s too little too late, i don’t know if BlackBerry will ever be able to turn the ship around. I hope so, if it’s one thing the mobile phone market need is more variety, I love that we are not in a 90’s Microsoft world of one Mobile OS, however i think the market is big enough for more than three providers. (iOS, Android and WP8)
Personally i think they should have added a stylus a la the Galaxy Note, i brought the Galaxy Note2 primarily to be able to write notes on the screen, if they are introducing a work/enterprise phablet, it would have made sense to have something to allow people to use it like a notepad for meeting etc…Just making the screen bigger is a bit of a waste when there is no application.
It could be nice for web browsing?
Neither tall and narrow nor short and wide (e.g. iPhone) has really been ideal for me…
The intended market for the Passport is banking and finance industry executives. The two overwhelming needs for these people are security and dealing with huge amounts of email. Everything else is secondary.
Thom
I’m going to be in Amsterdam this weekend, I can give you a demo (Z10) if you need some BB10 experience.
email me [email protected]
If you want to catch up.
James
Over the years I’ve experimented with the various smart phone OSes. Most recently I went with Android as I appreciated its flexibility and the multitude of applications available. Having tried Blackberry, Windows, iPhone and Android, I find myself missing the Blackberry. The folks at BB seem to excel at putting together the physical aspects of the phone (keyboard, battery, casing). The BB phones may not have the whiz-bang effect of other phones, but I think that is part of why I like them.
I want a phone that is good at making calls, sending texts and checking e-mails. The BB is really good at these things. A BB might not have the variety of apps, games and such, but no smart phone comes close to making communication as smooth. I often say that my Android phone is really good at being a small computer, but it really is terrible at being a phone.
Nailed it. It’s why I keep going back to Windows Phone from Android (and before that, back to Blackberry from Android). Android is an excellent OS for a mobile computer like a MID or tablet, and to be fair it has vastly improved on phones since version 4.2. But it’s still not quite there, at least for me.
This really is it. For a tablet, Android is my first choice, not without reservations, but if I want a keyboard, stylus, other things like AIDE, then it’s the only game in town if you want real flexibility. Windows 8 is getting there, but it’s still a bit limited. I do vastly prefer Visual Studio to Eclipse though.
For phones though, Android has become my last choice. I don’t need flexibility in a smartphone, I need good texting, email, maybe maps, little bit of web. For that I find my BlackBerry Q10 is a class above what I’ve had before. The OS is nice, but nothing ground breaking, but the hardware, with a QWERTY keyboard is irreplaceable.
That thing has zero appeal to me. I sure wouldn’t want to hold a big square thing up to my head.
When the first Galaxy Note came out, a good friend got one on launch day. Everyone kept asking her why she was talking on an iPad. It wasn’t long before she got a Bluetooth headset for it.
I would imagine the Passport would look even more awkward, even in this age of 6″ and larger phones.
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