BlackBerry Passport
.jpg)
The BlackBerry Passport is a smartphone developed and sold by BlackBerry (previously Research In Motion , RIM for short ) , which was first presented to media representatives on September 25, 2014 at parallel events in London , Toronto and Dubai . It was possible to pre-order via the BlackBerry Shop and Amazon shortly after the event. The devices were delivered to customers in October 2014. The rectangular design and the dimensions of the smartphone are based on the shape of a passport , from which the name of the passport is derived. The Passport was shipped from the factory with the BlackBerry 10 operating system .
Characteristics
Design and processing
Due to the dimensions of the Passport ( 128 × 90.3 × 9.3 mm ), the device differed significantly from the competing products available on the market at the time of publication. The 4.5-inch display with a resolution of 1,440 × 1,440 pixels (453 PPI), the glass of which is slightly rounded towards the sides, is located above the physical keyboard consisting of three lines on the front of the device. The back of the Passport is made of matt, glass fiber reinforced plastic and is adorned with the manufacturer's logo. The 13-megapixel camera with LED flash is also located here. The passport is surrounded on all sides by a metal frame, which is on the right side of the device by the volume control and the button for the BlackBerry Assistant, on the top of the device by the 3.5 mm jack connector and the on / off / standby button and on the bottom of the device is optically interrupted by the micro USB. Due to the metal connection running horizontally on the back, this construction is reminiscent of " the double T-beams used in modern architecture " and make the device appear solid. BlackBerry specifies the weight as 196 grams.
Touch sensitive keyboard
Another distinguishing feature is the haptic QWERTY keyboard , which is characteristic of the manufacturer, but which has increasingly lost importance in the course of the development of the smartphone, but was continued and developed by BlackBerry. Later, with the Passport, the company introduced a touch-sensitive QWERTY keyboard for the first time, with the scrolling of which the user can, for example, navigate through documents, websites or emails without blocking the view of the touchscreen. When using the Passport in landscape mode, the keyboard can be used as a scroll bar. A virtual keyboard can also be displayed in the lower screen area, which extends the tactile keyboard with tables of special characters and number blocks. When composing text messages, word suggestions are also displayed here, which can be accepted by swiping over the physical keyboard in the direction of the desired word.
technology
power
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 2.2 GHz quad-core CPUs (MSM8974-AA) in combination with the Adreno 330 (450 MHz G) graphics processor and 3 GB RAM memory was installed in the Passport. Charging processes and data synchronization take place via a USB 2.0 connection on the underside of the device.
camera
The camera with F2.0 lens and a resolution of 13 megapixels is located on the back of the device . The system has autofocus , optical image stabilization , 5x digital zoom and an LED flash for night shots.
Video recordings can be made in full HD resolution at 60 frames per second .
Microphone and speaker system
The Passport has a four-way microphone system and two stereo speakers on the underside of the device. Background noises are filtered out by the additional microphones and calls are adapted to the position of the telephone, which should ensure a significantly improved voice quality.
battery pack
With 3,450 milliampere hours (mAh), the built-in battery of the Passport has a comparably high capacity, so that BlackBerry specifies the talk time with up to 24 hours and the playback of videos with up to 11 hours. According to the manufacturer, mixed use is up to 30 hours.
Storage capacity
The internal memory of the Passport is 32 gigabytes and can be expanded by up to 256 gigabytes to a total of 288 gigabytes using an external microSD card .
Applications
The company's own BlackBerry World app store and the Amazon app store are installed on the Passport at the factory . The BlackBerry 10 operating system has supported the execution of Android apps since version 10.3, which can be obtained from the Amazon Appstore. In principle, it is thus possible to install Android apps on the Passport. However, it can occasionally lead to compatibility problems during execution if the apps are not obtained from the Amazon Appstore but from other sources such as third-party providers. In principle, almost all applications up to Android Runtime 4.3 are supported. For applications that require Google Play Services, a certain extra effort is associated.
reception
Sales success
The first edition of the Passport with a quantity of around 200,000 devices was sold out within a few hours. The devices offered via the Blackberry Shop were sold out after 6 hours, the devices offered via Amazon after around 10 hours. As a result, the Passport briefly took first place on Amazon among the best-selling, contract-free smartphones. The selling price of the Passport was $ 599, the recommended retail price in Germany being € 649.00.
Silver Edition
On August 4, 2015, BlackBerry released the Silver Edition, a special edition of the Passport.
Hardly any changes have been made to the hardware compared to the conventional Passport, so that the Silver Edition differs largely in terms of look and feel. The device housing is by definition silver and made of reinforced stainless steel, which increases the weight of the Passport in the Silver Edition by 9 grams to a total of 205 grams and the device dimensions to 131 × 90.3 × 9.3 mm. The chin of the device is a little higher and the back of the device is fluted in a diamond pattern, which should increase the grip of the device. Furthermore, the design of the main camera has been significantly changed and is reminiscent of the design of a SLR camera . The edges of the Passport were slightly rounded in the Silver Edition and the speakers on the underside of the device were provided with a protective micro-perforation. In addition, the chip for the front camera has been changed, which results in a faster response time. The keyboard has also been adjusted slightly and can now be operated with even less resistance.
Individual evidence
- ↑ How to Tune-In to the BlackBerry Passport Event Tomorrow . ( blackberry.com [accessed December 12, 2016]).
- ↑ BlackBerry Passport - Touchscreen, touch-enabled smartphone keyboard - Germany - Germany. In: de.blackberry.com. Retrieved December 12, 2016 .
- ↑ BlackBerry Passport Specifications - Specifications of the BlackBerry Passport Smartphone - Germany - Germany. In: de.blackberry.com. Retrieved December 19, 2016 .
- ↑ Phone Bunch BlackBerry Passport. Retrieved December 23, 2017 .
- ↑ Crackberry forum. Retrieved December 23, 2017 .
- ↑ Passport sellouts at 200,000 preorders reveal a more modest BlackBerry . In: PCWorld . ( pcworld.com [accessed December 19, 2016]).
- ↑ BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition. In: crackberry.com. Retrieved December 23, 2017 .