Blackberry Passport Specs revealed in Hands-on - Why Microsoft Office and BBM Music will make the Passport Hip to Be Square

“We are pleased to have agreed new terms with BlackBerry to provide its users with access to music. This arrangement ensures both the continuation of our relationship with BlackBerry and our ability to sell music to its users.”

Chief Executive Officer of 7digital. Simon Cole commenting on the new Deal minted with Blackberry to provide Streaming Music Service

Finally some new on the Blackberry Passport that’s set to launch sometime in September 2014 that’s the kind of Positive news that BlackBerry CEO John Chen is sure to love as noted in my blog article entitled “Blackberry blogs positive reviews of Passport as Z3 sells out in India - Blackberry Passport may be their ticket on the Indian Express”.

The first bit of news is the specs for the Passport. A U.K. retailer Carphone Warehouse did a very good and probably the only official hands-on video of the Passport in action as noted in

“BlackBerry Passport: Hands-on video shows off keyboard features”, published August 14, 2014 By Malarie Gokey, Digitaltrends and “BlackBerry's Strange New Smartphone Has A Physical Keyboard That Doubles As A Touchpad”, published AUG. 15, 2014, 10:28 AM by LISA EADICICCO, BusinessInsider

The second bit of good news is that based on that video, we now have an idea of the specs of the Blackberry Passport to explain why it’s hip to be Square as pointed out in my blog article entitled “Blackberry Passport coming in September 2014 - Squaring up again the competition in Portrait and Landscape Mode”.

Blackberry Passport – Microsoft Office and BBM Music will make it Hip to be Square

The squarish Blackberry Passport, interestingly, is the best of both worlds with Blackberry 10.3 OS. It's packing the big ARM guns with a 2.5GHz, Snapdragon 801 Processor and a very ample 3GM RAM. External microSD support for up to 32GB is somewhat lackluster as given its size; I was expecting at least 64GB SD Card Support. Also the camera is a bit underwhelming, being as it’s an 8Megapixel camera; apparently software on the Passport will be doing the work of making the images pop.

But the important thing to me is the workspace for doing business i.e. spreadsheets and reading Word Documents. It’s go an ample 4.5" capacitive touch screen with a resolution of 1,440 × 1,440 pixels and a full QWERTY Keyboard. That's good enough to do great amounts of work but if there's no native support for Microsoft Office, then the Passport won't get stamped with the VISA and thus be able to board the prosperity plane.

But all work and no play without music isn’t cool.

Blackberry took the hatchet to their BBM Music they’d launched in August 2011 as reported in “BlackBerry and 7digital strike deal to launch new music service”, published Thursday 14 August 2014 07.13 BST, published Mark Sweeney, The UK Guardian. If you remember, users of the BBM (Black Berry Messenger) could stream for only US$5 per month as stated in my blog article entitled “BBM Music Service coming for US$5 monthly – The Sound of Music attracts Millennials”.

However, the re-inked a deal with 7Music, the providers of BBM Music to have them take over the service and keep all the profit from song sales. Thus BBM Music is not only back but it may be coming on the Blackberry Passport, giving you music to rock to while you work on the go.

Blackberry 10.3 OS promises a lot of update features that’ll be on display in London in September 2014. But if it has Microsoft Office built in and BBM Music in the BBM, then it’ll REALLY be hip to be Square.