I saw the BlackBerry Passport before it was released officially. It was during TPL 2—Twitter Premier League, 2nd edition in September 2014. The gentleman was one of the people that were testing the device on one of Nigeria’s Telco network. He allowed me to play with it a little, but no photos.
The first thing I thought to myself is, the phone is humongous and ugly. If I judged the phone that way and refused to try it out, it would not have been just on my part.
Meet the BlackBerry Passport
The Blackberry Passport is powered by BlackBerry 10 Operating System (OS). It spots a resolution of 1440 x 1440 and a screen size of 4.5” diagonal with 1:1 aspect ratio—by that resolution, you can already tell that the screen is square. It does video recording at 1080p HD at 60 fps and supports MicroSD card.
The battery is non-user replaceable at 3450 mAh. It has a 13-megapixel autofocus camera with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS. The OIS is missing in the iPhone 6, but present in the iPhone 6 Plus. Nokia has been using it since the days of Nokia Lumia 920) and a 2MP fixed focus front facing (selfie) shooting camera that can do 720p HD video recording.
Now that you have met the BlackBerry Passport, what you might want to know next is, is it a phone I should get? There are those who are due for a BlackBerry upgrade or someone just looking to pick a second phone or buying a smartphone for the first time. You are likely asking, is the BlackBerry Passport for me?
Related Video: Unboxing the Blackberry Passport
Is the BlackBerry Passport for you?
Design
It is 4.5” in size with aspect ration 1:1 and screen resolution of 1440 x 1440 and a physical keyboard. What this means is that the phone looks awkward and cannot fit into your jeans or pants without bulging out. If you are looking for a phone just for the aesthetics, this is not the phone for you. Another way to look at it is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some people think the phone is really cute.
The keyboard is physical with the symbol and number keys on the screen (virtual keys). BlackBerry pulled a tricky one here and they implemented it well. You will find this strange in the first few hours or the first few days of using the Passport, but you’ll get used to it and love it after a while—like I am already.
The BlackBerry Passport reminds of me on Nokia E61i running on Symbian back in the days.
It looks masculine in design, but the first person I saw the BlackBerry passport with in Nigeria after it was released is a lady. The sad part is, on the third day, the screen was already shattered. The phone fell from her as she was trying to handle two tasks at the same time.
Software
The software that shipped with the BlackBerry Passport is the latest one—not ready for BlackBerry Z10, Q10, Q5 and Z30, earlier BlackBerry 10 devices. It has something that got me excited, BlackBerry Blend—more on that later.
You can easily download applications to the Passport from the BlackBerry App World and Amazon App Store that came pre-installed with the phone. Android apps work with BlackBerry 10 even before the Passport was released to run this latest firm ware, but you would have do it yourself by performing some techie steps or just download 1Mobile Market App Store from their Website to get Android apps.
With the Amazon App Store, you can buy some apps that are premium, unlike with the 1Mobile Market where the apps you get are only free apps.
Audio and Call Quality
Dialling out and receiving calls on the Passport is pretty decent. I did not have any problem whatsoever. I also observed that I was able to play audio files without using the earphones and the audio was still loud enough. I feel I can hold a party playing music out loud from the Passport—it is that loud.
Camera Quality
BlackBerry Cameras have been decent since the days of BlackBerry Bold 9900.
Pictures shot with the 9900 come out fine if there’s enough natural light and if the photos are shot outdoors. BlackBerry Passport is the first BlackBerry I get very decent photos in low light condition. The photos won’t beat that of Nokia Lumia 920 and 1020 low light images, but it performs better than the camera of the HTC One M8 under low light.
One annoyance though is the size of the pictures. All photos shot with the Passport come out in 1440 x 1440 in ratio 1:1. While you might need to do some editing and cropping, this picture size is great for Instagram and BBM Display Picture.
Here are a picture taken in the afternoon with the camera.
Battery Life
Above, I stated the battery capacity of the Passport to be 3450 mAh. I am a heavy user and once I take the phone off charging in the morning at 6 a.m., it takes me through the whole day and I end up with about 20% battery when I am back home at 8 p.m. But individual use case varies. But the battery really lasts, even with the poor network quality we have in Nigeria.
BBM, BB Voice and BlackBerry Hub
I have never enjoyed using BlackBerry Messenger on non-BlackBerry phones the way I enjoy using it on Blackberry phones. With the larger screen of the Passport, messaging is so much fun.
The BlackBerry hub is one feature that’s unique to BlackBerry 10 devices. It makes it easy for one to dive straight into the events that really matter, like notifications, text messages, emails, BBM, Twitter and any other account that you have signed in to built with the phone. It’s one feature you’re going to be using a lot of it you do get this phone.
Documents Management and Reading
There’s a PDF document, a new eBook that has just been emailed to me from an author I love and read. The PDF is formatted and about 30 pages. Normally, I’ll pick up my iPad to download the PDF to it. I possibly can’t read it comfortably on the BlackBerry Q10 if I tried, but I can with ease on the BlackBerry Passport—without scrolling from edge to edge to reveal texts from one edge of the document to the other.
I find reading using the Kindle app on the Passport pretty easy as well.
Pain points
I found it very annoying that when I am done with a call and take the phone off from my ear, the phone screen is still dark (asleep). If the receiver at the other end doesn’t end the call, I will have to hit on the power button to wake up the screen in order to end the call. I don’t know if this is just an issue with the unit I reviewed or that is how it is for every other person.
Also, if you are used to some apps that are still missing in BlackBerry 10, like the Pocket, Instagram, Feedly and the like, you might not be able to make the shift to the Passport, except you’re getting the Passport as your second device.
It is strange for me though how hard I am finding things to complain about the BlackBerry Passport. The BlackBerry Passport is a great phone that delivers all that it was designed to do.
Although I think the BlackBerry Passport is overpriced. They are not so much in demand in the market right now. It is a phone you might want to just have as your second phone except you are a die-hard Blackberry fan or a business executive. So, I think it should have been sold for N90,000 and not N130,000 that it is currently selling for.
Would you be getting the BlackBerry Passport?
