Blackberry Passport: Expert Review - Camera, Battery, Display, Pros and Cons

INTRODUCTION

Blackberry has been affected severely by the smartphone industry. With them not being able to cope up with Android and not making phones with as much functionality as other smartphone devices, Blackberry has lost out on even its most loyal users. However, with the Blackberry Passport, they have used an unconventional design in a last effort to attract customers without losing out on its “work only” charm. Let’s take a look inside and see what blackberry has come up with.

DESIGN AND DISPLAY

Blackberry has made a perfectly square 4.5-inch screen that has no landscape view. Blackberry said that its design is focused on the business customer as the screen will be able to fit 60 characters in a single line as compared to 40 on an ordinary phone. The keyboard on the bottom looks weird simply because they have dropped 4 rows to three. Thus punctuations and numbers appear on the screen on top giving the phone more bizarre user experience. The phone, however, looks good and has a metal trim and also a rubberized back that feel comfortable to hold while you type out emails. The phone was built for prolonged two handed use than short one-handed browsing. The screen is an IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1440x1440 giving it a pixel density of 453 ppi.

PERFORMANCE AND CONFIGURATION

Despite the awkward shape and look of the phone, the Passport packs quite a punch when it comes to performance. The phone has a Snapdragon 801 processor and a 3GB RAM. The Quad core Krait 400 processor has been clocked at 2.26 GHZ. The graphics unit is an Adreno 330. The phone runs on a Blackberry OS 10, which has many improved features like the Blackberry blend and the Blackberry assistant. It also has many power saving features which will increase the battery life of the phone. The phone comes with 32GB of internal memory which can be expanded to 256GB through a dedicated slot.

CAMERA AND MULTIMEDIA

The 13MP back camera has features like autofocus, OIS, geo-tagging, face detection, GDR, and panorama. The camera is good for a business phone as you can’t expect its users to take many pictures. The phone also has a 2 MP Selfie camera for skyping and taking selfies. The phone can churn out videos at 1080p at 60fps.

BATTERY AND CONNECTIVITY

Blackberry claims that its 3450 mAh battery will last for 23 hours for even the most demanding users. The phone should also only take a few hours to juice completely up.

The Blackberry Passport had a great competitioon with the OnePlus Mobiles - OnePlus One, OnePlus 2 and OnePls X. In some conditions OnePlus X is a best phone when compared to the Passport.

PROS AND CONS

WHAT WE LIKED

1) Good battery life of up to 23 hours

2) Lots of improvement to the Blackberry OS 10

3) The phone is comfortable to hold, and typing is very easy

4) With a Snapdragon processor and quad-core chipset, the Passport is very high on performance

WHAT CAN BE IMPROVED

1) The unconventional design might take some getting used to.

2) One handed use is pretty much impossible, and the phone is also heavy