Passport To Success? BlackBerry Bets Big On Enterprise-Focused, Square-Shaped Smartphone

Once ahead of the pack in the smartphone industry, BlackBerry has flirted with financial ruin.

Partners have expressed losing their patience with the Waterloo, Ontario-based company, hoping that it would stop trying to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung in the consumer markets and come back to the enterprise user base that had launched its success.

Led by BlackBerry CEO John Chen, the company did just that Wednesday with the release of the Passport, an enterprise-focused high-end smartphone designed for business professionals.

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"As we set out to design BlackBerry Passport, we were guided by a simple yet challenging idea -- to set aside the limitations of traditional design and to instead simply build a device that fundamentally changes the way business professionals get work done on their smartphone," said Chen in a statement. "The BlackBerry Passport was created to drive productivity and to break through the sea of rectangular-screen, all-touch devices."

The square-shaped display on the BlackBerry Passport measures 4.5 x 4.5 inches. The LCD screen has a resolution of 1,440 x 1,440 at 453 dpi. The Gorilla Glass screen display may seem different because it is supposed to be, according to the company. BlackBerry said the screen is designed for professional users to be able to clearly read texts in documents, messages, emails and more, by fitting 60 characters per line of text, more than any iPhone or Galaxy phone.

The company did not shy away from comparing its product to smartphones from Apple and Samsung, with the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S5 on stage at Wednesday's launch event side-by-side with the new Passport.

"They won't fix it overnight, but it is good that BlackBerry is reassuring its customers that they are going after the enterprise market," said Robby Hill, founder and CEO of Florence, S.C.-based solution provider HillSouth, a BlackBerry partner. "I hope it is a step in the right direction. They seem to be focusing on the business market. Business users are losing their faith in BlackBerry every day. They need to work to get the confidence of the business users back."

BlackBerry demonstrated the Passport's new touch-enabled keyboard as the company still utilizes the physical keyboard, unlike other high-end smartphones on the market. The company said the keyboard enables users to type more accurately and with less mistakes than a touch-screen keyboard. Users also can use the keyboard to easily navigate through the BlackBerry 10.3 operating system update that comes standard on the new device.

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The company also demonstrated BlackBerry Assistant voice commands, which it put head-to-head against Google Now and Apple Siri, showcasing a design aimed to compete in the workplace as it has easy access to both work and personal data. The voice assistant recognizes typed commands and organizes them accordingly to calendars or contacts. The Passport's voice assistant won't activate if commands are given through text as it understands it is not an appropriate time for audio, according to BlackBerry.

"Phones are getting larger and larger, so we'll have to wait and see if BlackBerry is on to something with this new square-shaped screen," said HillSouth's Hill. "I'm wary of new form factors because we have to be comfortable carrying the device, first and foremost. Users still seem to think of BlackBerry as a comfortable keyboard provider; as long as they continue to innovate on physical keyboards they should draw that appeal. I think the voice assistant is very sharp and great for enterprise users."

BlackBerry highlighted the Passport's 13-megapixel HD camera that is packed with optical image stabilization technology for clearer pictures in dim lighting and minimized motion blur. The camera is the most advanced of any previous BlackBerry phone and is capable of taking 1,080p HD videos, according to the company.

BlackBerry aimed to appease critics of its ecosystem by revealing that the Passport has access to more than 250,000 Android apps through the Amazon Appstore, in addition to BlackBerry's homemade enterprise-focused apps. BlackBerry also is offering a daily deal to Passport users to download one "high-quality paid app" for free every day.

The Passport features a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, 32 GB of storage space that can be upgraded and 3 GB of RAM. The devoce is available immediately in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Canada, with plans to have it available in 30 additional countries by year-end.

The Passport is priced at $599 in the U.S. without a contract.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 24, 2014