BlackBerry on Wednesday unveiled its new enterprise dedicated smartphone dubbed ‘Passport’ at events in Dubai, London and Toronto.
The £529 Passport marks BlackBerry’s first global phone launch under chief executive John Chen who took over the post in November last year.
The struggling Canadian company claimed its new device, which resembles the size and shape of an actual passport, is ideal for reading and writing emails, reviewing and editing documents, web browsing and map navigation.
Powered by a quad-core 2.2GHz processor, the new square-shaped smart phone ‘Passport’ features a 4.5-inch square touchscreen, with a resolution of 453 pixels per inch, made from toughened Corning Gorilla Glass and a three-row QWERTY touch-enabled keyboard.
The handset boasts a 13-megapixel rear camera, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory expandable up to 128GB via a microSD, a quad microphone system and 3,450 mAh battery. BlackBerry claimed that the smartphone’s battery is the largest among the top selling handsets and phablets offering up to 30 minutes of mixed use and best battery power ever.
The Passport runs the latest update of its operating system BB10 – BlackBerry 10.3. The updated software comes pre-loaded with BlackBerry Blend, which lets users BlackBerry content to other devices including PCs and Android phones, Blackberry Assistant – a facility that recognizes voice commands and speaks back in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian as well as the Amazon Appstore.
The phone, priced at £529, is now available in the UK, Canada, France, Germany and the US. The device will be on sale in 39 countries before the end of the year, the smart phone maker confirmed.
