In what is being dubbed a last-ditch attempt by BlackBerry to crawl back market share from its rivals, the Canadian firm has officially launched its Passport phone.
After being unveiled at an event in June, chief executive John Chen has been teasing the square phone’s features ever since.
And at a launch event yesterday, BlackBerry revealed that the 4.5-inch device is now available in the UK, US, France, Germany, and Canada – and will run Android apps from the Amazon Appstore.
The BlackBerry Passport will also be available through Amazon.com, and the retailer will be announcing its pricing ‘soon’.
In addition to the large, 1440×1440 pixel square screen, the device has a 3450 mAH battery which BlackBerry claims will last up to 30 hours.
It has a quad-core 2.2 GHZ Processor, 3GB RAM as well as a 13MP rear camera, and 32GB memory.
The touchscreen is accompanied by a physical keyboard, and the Passport runs BlackBerry 10 OS 10.3.
This software features BlackBerry Blend, which lets users BlackBerry content to other devices including PCs and Android phones, as well as the Amazon Appstore.
This means that Android apps will run on the device, but only those available from the Amazon store, installed on the BlackBerry device.
The device will be available in more than 30 countries around the world, including the Middle East, France, India, Singapore, Austria, Germany, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Vietnam, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Venezuela, Philippines, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Romania, and Colombia.
1 thought on “BlackBerry officially launches its Passport phone – and the square device will run Android apps”
Nice attempt by the Blackberry makers, bravo! but the fact remains that the Blackberry devices are losing their hold & touch if you know what I mean.