BlackBerry Passport review

BlackBerry has tried everything to get out of its sales slump: sticking with what it knows (the classic Q10), ditching the keyboard for a touchscreen (Z10), and even targeting emerging markets (Z3). See also the 12 best smartphones of 2014.

With the BlackBerry Passport, it has returned to the physical keyboard that first made it famous, and has also eschewed the touchscreen rectangle common to pretty much every other smartphone on the market and gone square instead.

That odd shape is the Passport’s main selling point – although the OS has had a welcome update, too – but also the reason many will find it hard to hold and use: this isn’t a smartphone for the masses, it’s for a very specific selection of users. If you’re one of them, you may well find the Passport a revelation that makes working on the move easy; if you’re not, you may wonder what mind-altering substances BlackBerry’s engineers have been indulging in.

BlackBerry Passport review: size and design

Although the screen is a square, measuring 4.5in across the diagonal, the device itself is more of a stubby rectangle. It’s 128mm tall and 90mm across, with the “chin” of the device taken up by the physical keyboard at the bottom and a thick black bezel at the top giving room for the 2-megapixel, 720p front-facing camera and a rather large BlackBerry logo. As if anyone will have to ask who manufactured this oddity.

The keyboard isn’t a full five-row affair, as with BlackBerry handset of times past. Instead, there are just three rows of physical keys, comprising letters in a Qwerty layout, plus Backspace, Enter and spacebar keys. A one-line virtual keyboard for numbers and symbols pops up when you’re typing, or you can open a larger version by swiping upwards on the physical keyboard.

That’s right: the keyboard itself is touch-sensitive, a feature that opens up a selection of intriguing gesture controls. You can use it to scroll through web pages by sliding your finger down across the keys, or pan left or right on a page with a swipe. While typing, words are suggested along the top of the keyboard, and you swipe up underneath one to select it. It’s a clever system that works so well it’s a wonder no-one else has thought of it.

Those who have never got on with virtual keyboards will love the Passport’s keyboard. Its keys feel sturdy and have a slight angle to them to make it easy to grab the right key with the tip of your thumb. However, as you’re holding the device to type, it can be difficult to get your finger into the bottom corners.

If you’re used to a virtual keyboard, it will take some time to get up to full speed, and it certainly feels odd to push the keys rather than just graze them with a fingertip. We were never able to type quite as fast with this keypad as we have with Swype, but that may yet come with time.

Keyboard aside, the Passport is a chunkier, thicker design than most flagship handsets, at 9.3mm and 196g, but it feels rock-solid; we don’t expect to hear reports of Passports bending in pockets any time soon. The rear is black plastic and there’s a metal rim around the edge, which has a slight curve to make it more comfortable to hold; most of the time, though, you’ll be grasping it in both mitts. On the bottom edge, there’s a pair of speakers and a micro-USB port for charging; on the right side is a pair of metallic volume buttons, and at the top is the headphone jack and power button. The microSD slot and the SIM slot are accessible via a small clip-off panel at the back.

BlackBerry Passport review: OS and software

The Passport is the first phone to run BlackBerry OS 10.3, the highlight of which is an updated messaging hub and PC companion software, BlackBerry Blend. As before, the hub places all your notifications in one place for at-a-glance updates, but it now allows you to transfer conversations from one type of communication to another – say, from SMS to email, and more easily delete and toggle the status of a message between read and unread.

Via BlackBerry Blend, you can now access your phone’s hub on other devices: Windows laptops, desktops and tablets are supported, as are Android tablets and iPads, but not Android smartphones or iPhones. Install the appropriate app to get your notifications, and you can tuck your phone away for the rest of the day. If you feel like you’re drowning in notifications, Blend is a life-saver.

Unlike other mobile OSes, BlackBerry’s doesn’t have an editable homescreen. Swiping up and to the right when in an app brings you to the messaging screen, and swiping straight up brings you to the multitasking view, which displays what’s currently running as well as recently used apps. Swipe right to see your full app listings.

The gesture system is more complicated than on other systems – you’ll want to do the tutorial – but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to navigate. Rather than a dropdown notification bar at the top, BlackBerry gives all the space to the app; to see messages and the time, swipe up on the screen.

Another timesaving feature is the search tool. Start typing from the app screen, and it finds everything related to the term. Search for “settings”, and it brings up the settings adjustment screen, a quick settings tool, and even emails that mention the word. Speaking of settings, they’re easy to use and powerful: setting up email accounts is a moment’s work, and you can easily see how much battery, CPU and memory that a specific app uses.

Apps are a still a major downfall for BlackBerry, despite the move to include the Amazon Appstore and its repository of Android apps. Although this means the Passport has much more choice available to it than previous BlackBerry handsets, there are still problems – many apps we installed simply failed to run – and there are still plenty of holes, with no Kindle app nor Google Maps available.

BlackBerry Passport review: display, performance and camera

BlackBerry says it went with a square display to make reading easier, and the 1,440 x 1,440-resolution screen (453ppi) is indeed a joy for viewing documents and websites on. It’s especially good outside, even in the sunshine: our tests show it has an impressive maximum brightness of 707cd/m2, and a solid contrast ratio of 790:1, with a good spread of colours and decent accuracy. It covers 90% of the sRGB colour gamut and gains an average Delta E of 1.65.

Navigating through the OS, launching apps, and scrolling through web pages are all smooth and judder-free on the Passport, which perhaps isn’t a surprise given its top-of-the-line 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip. Because the Passport won’t run all Android apps successfully, we were only able to run the single-threaded SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, and here it pulled in a respectable time of 876ms. In terms of other specifications, it has a solid 3GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in storage that’s expandable via a microSD card, and supports 4G.

The camera is unremarkable, which isn’t ideal in a smartphone of this price; it can’t compare with the quality of the Apple iPhone 6 or the Samsung Galaxy S5. Detail in images looks smudged thanks to over-compression, and poor auto white balance spoils some images with a pinkish tone, although flipping on the HDR setting improves the situation.

The autofocus can be slow, but the camera does have optical image stabilisation, which can be deployed when taking photographs and capturing videos. In short, the camera is perfectly fine for a quick snapshot or nabbing a business card’s details before you lose it, but if you’re a smartphone photography devotee, you’ll want a different handset.

The Passport does come with a nice selection of photo apps, however. There are built-in editing and filter tools – handy, since Instagram isn’t available via either app store – and the camera app is reasonably intelligent. It recognises when a scene has extremes of light and dark, and suggests you capture using HDR. When it recognises a face, it will nudge you in the direction of its Time Shift tool, which takes a burst of photos, so you can avoid the one where your subject’s eyes are shut tight. If you’re looking to set a background photo on your square Passport display, you can also capture at a 1:1 ratio.

BlackBerry Passport review: battery

One area where the Passport shines is battery life. The large size gives BlackBerry room to cram in a massive 3,450mAh battery, and it lasts well. In our tests, it drained at a rate of 7.3% per hour while playing a 720p video. That’s pretty good considering the size and resolution of the display, but more impressively, it consumed only 2% per hour while streaming audio over 3G with the display switched off. That puts it on a par with the iPhone 6, which is a pretty good result.

There’s one caveat: when we first set up our various social networking and email accounts, the initial synchronisation drained the battery flat in no time. Once it settled in, however, the Passport easily lasted a whole weekend of light use without a trip to the power outlet – although that was without playing any video or graphics-intensive games.

BlackBerry Passport review: verdict

The BlackBerry Passport contains some genuine innovations: the touch keyboard, the intriguing shape and the messaging hub are all clever ideas that show the Canadian smartphone maker shouldn’t be counted out completely.
However, what makes the Passport special also makes it a niche device. While phones are getting bigger, most people will want a smartphone that fits in a pocket, and for all but a few users a virtual keyboard is sufficient and a square display an unnecessary oddity. That said, if you’re irritated by reading on rectangular displays, long for the days of physical keyboards, and are more likely to email than Instagram, the Passport may well be ideal for you.

While the solid specifications and excellent battery life will appeal to anyone, the Passport is most let down by the lack of supported apps. BlackBerry must find a way to get key apps onto its platform: the fact that it promotes the Amazon Appstore but doesn’t have the Kindle reader is an embarrassment.

All in, BlackBerry’s creative take on mobile working must be applauded, even if we don’t expect the Passport to sell in the millions. At the £529 price, it’s competing with flagship phones, making this truly a case of try-before-you-buy. Use it for a week: some will send it back frustrated, but others might just fall in love.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	Free
Contract monthly charge	£30.50
Contract period	24 months
Contract provider	www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk
Battery Life
Talk time, quoted	23hrs
Standby, quoted	18 days 12 hours
Physical
Dimensions	90 x 9.3 x 128mm (WDH)
Touchscreen	yes
Primary keyboard	Physical
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	3.00GB
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.5in
Resolution	1440 x 1440
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	BlackBerry OS