BlackBerry Passport is the boldest and most purpose-built BlackBerry yet, available in Malaysia October 10th through Celcom

BlackBerry Malaysia officially launched its bold new smartphone named BlackBerry Passport, just a day after it was unveiled internationally. BlackBerry is going back to its roots of making a high quality smartphone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, and I’ve never seen BlackBerry this focused in its purpose, since a very long time. BlackBerry Passport will be a Celcom-exclusive device from October 10th, 2014, and will only be made available through other partners from November 1st, 2014. The recommended retail price is RM2,399.

Photo (left to right): Ben Quirin, Managing Director of Indochina at BlackBerry; Noora Mat Rifin, Head of Device Marketing and Product Development, Celcom Axiata Berhad; and Koay Seng Tian, Product Manager at BlackBerry Malaysia.

Ben Quirin, Managing Director of Indochina at BlackBerry said, “We are excited to mark a new milestone here at BlackBerry by introducing the first square screen design and touch-enabled keyboard smartphone — the BlackBerry Passport. Aimed at the mobile professionals, this groundbreaking device equipped with the new BlackBerry 10.3 OS, will allow users to elevate their productivity and collaborate more effectively. The BlackBerry Passport will definitely be the talk of the town, breaking through the sea of rectangular-screen, all-touch devices”.

There are many compelling features of the Passport which we’ll go through below:

• Design — This thing is huge. Because it is a ‘phablet’ that has a square display (1:1) instead of a 16:9 aspect ratio, it is wide, at 90.3mm. For comparison, even the BlackBerry Z30 is only 72mm wide, and one of our favorite phablets — OPPO N1 — is only 82.6mm wide. However, BlackBerry said that it is still portable enough to be pocketable.
• Large high-resolution square screen — Rather than the crippled square screen of BlackBerry Q10 and Q5 where apps are cramped into a small display, BlackBerry Passport’s 4.5-inch IPS LCD is large enough to be used in any orientation. Not only that, it is also dense, with 1440 x 1440 pixels at around 453ppi, and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. However, we still need to find out whether games with widescreen layouts will be squished/stretched or not.
• Innovative BlackBerry Keyboard — You can trust BlackBerry to make great physical keyboards. This “revolutionary” design keeps its footprint as little as possible, but at the same time increased its width for less typos. I’m not sure what this tells us about BlackBerry 10 OS, because according to an internal user study, BlackBerry Passport’s physical QWERTY keyboard is almost four times more accurate than BlackBerry 10 virtual keyboards. The error rate is on average 74% lower than typing on glass. Passport’s physical keyboard is also touch-enabled, letting you use it to scroll webpages or use it as a trackpad for navigation.
• BlackBerry 10 OS 10.3 — We like BlackBerry 10 and think that it’s one of the most feature-full and stable “1.0” operating system. The company has improved on that, to now offer new features like BlackBerry Assistant, BlackBerry Blend, Amazon Appstore, updated icons, and an instant action bar containing users’ frequently accessed functions. BlackBerry Passport and Porsche Design P’9938 are the first two devices to come with BlackBerry 10.3, and we can’t wait until the rest of the BB10 devices to get this update.
• BlackBerry Assistant — It is BlackBerry’s first digital assistant that uses voice and text commands to let users manage emails, contacts, calendar, and other native BB10 apps. It is intelligent enough so that when you type in queries, it’ll respond silently, and if you speak, it will have an audio feedback. Same goes to Bluetooth, if activated from a wireless headset, it speaks back with additional context, because it assumes you do not have access to the screen at the moment.
• BlackBerry Blend — Aiming to bring ‘continuity’ to your usage, BlackBerry Blend brings messaging and content on the BlackBerry to your computer and tablet. Instant messaging, work and personal emails, BBM or text messages, documents, calendar, contacts, and media, can all be accessed in real time on the computer and tablet that runs the BlackBerry Blend app. It works with Mac OS X 10.7+, Windows 7+, Android 4.4+ via cellular, WiFi, and even USB connections. BlackBerry Blend may work with other tablets in the future, like the iPad. BlackBerry Blend can be downloaded from http://blackberry.com/blend.
• Dual app storefronts — This is by far, the most important feature of BlackBerry 10.3 and Passport, that will hopefully make BB10 devices more compelling. Besides your usual BlackBerry World app store, BlackBerry Passport comes preloaded with Amazon Appstore, and it works in Malaysia too. Here, you’ll get to install a plethora of Android apps legitimately, previously not available or possible on this platform, even through sideloading.
• Premium components — Previous BB10 devices are not known for its high-end hardware, but not here. BlackBerry Passport packs top-of-the-line specifications, including a Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.26GHz processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB ROM, and a 13-megapixel rear camera with wait for it — optical image stabilization.
• Large battery — BlackBerry Z30 had an OK battery life, at 2880mAh. Passport dials it up a notch with a large, 3450mAh battery pack. It also has a high-density display, however that doesn’t not affect the uptime as early reports indicate an excellent battery life.
• BlackBerry Natural Sound — Not many smartphones have stereo speakers, but the Passport does. It touts to have one of the loudest and clearest in the industry, including a quad microphone array. BlackBerry Natural Sound Technology is built-in, taking into account the phone position and background noise, to automatically adjust volume.

We’re not even done with the specifications yet; below are the rest of them, and you can expect most of them to be high-end as well.

• Size: 128 x 90.3 x 9.3 mm
• Weight: 196 grams
• Display: 453ppi, 4.5” in-cell IPS LCD touch display, 1440 x 1440 pixels
• Keyboard: 3-row touch-enabled QWERTY (recognizes touch gestures)
• Memory: 3GB RAM, 32GB flash, hot-swappable microSD slot taking up to 128GB
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974AA
• CPU: Quad-core 2.26GHz Krait 400
• GPU: Adreno 330
• Rear camera: 13MP, autofocus, LED flash, image & video stabilization, 5x digital zoom, 1080p video recording up to 60fps
• Front camera: 2MP, image & video stabilization, 3x digital zoom, 720p video recording
• Connectivity: A-GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC, micro-USB, micro-HDMI
• Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, ambient light, Time of Flight (ToF)
• WiFi: Dual-band 2.4 & 5 GHz, 802.11b/g/n/ac, hotspot, WiFi Direct, Miracast, DLNA
• Network: FD-LTE, 700/800/850/900/1700/1800/1900/2100/2600 MHz
• Battery: 3450mAh, up to 30 hours of “mixed” use
• Operating system: BlackBerry 10.3

BlackBerry Passport does come in White, but it seems that we may only get the Black version for now in Malaysia. Celcom will be the exclusive carrier to sell this phone from October 10th. The retail price is RM2,399, but it starts from RM638 through Celcom’s bundling plans. Other partners will only be selling the Passport from November 1st. More information here: http://blackberry.com/passport.

Update (October 14th, 2014): Celcom’s BlackBerry Passport page is now up. The device starts at RM788 with Celcom First on a two-year contract. More here: https://www.celcom.com.my/personal/devices/blackberry/overview/blackberry-passport.

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