US$720 Blackberry Passport Specs Revealed – Metallic Accent with Big Battery makes this Hip to Be Square Phablet Trend a Winner

Folks, I’ve finally gotten my hands on the specs for the Blackberry Passport, including cost!

If you’ve been following my blog, you’d have no doubt seen my video that gave a teaser in my blog article entitled “Blackberry Passport Specs revealed in Hands-on - Why Microsoft Office and BBM Music will make the Passport Hip to Be Square”.

So I’m a little excited to reveal the full specs of the Blackberry Passport as reported in an article by GSMArena entitled “BlackBerry Passport detailed review appears ahead of launch”, published 27 August, 2014, GSMArena and “Alleged BlackBerry Passport Review Details Specifications and Features”, published August 28, 2014 by Robin Sinha, NDTV Gadgets.

This thanks to our Czech friends at Mobilenet.cz!

Based on a survey conducted by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech in the First Quarter of 2014 with some 20,000 volunteers, phablets may be the next big trend after all as stated in the article “The world wants a bigger iPhone and big smartphones in general”, published August 28, 2014 12:58 PM PDT by Eric Mack, CNET News, especially as this study's sample size is so large. So the Blackberry Passport is already on some solid footing!

Blackberry Passport Specs Revealed – Metallic Accent with Big Battery makes this a Winner

The Blackberry Passport sports a 4.5" display that boasts a resolution of 1440x1440 with an eye-popping 453 ppi (pixel per Inch) density. That display isn't Sapphire but Gorilla Glass 3, which is almost as strong. It measures 128mm by 90.3mm by 9.3mm (5.04” by 3.56” by 0.37”) and weighs a hefty 195g (6.88 oz), which is expected for a square smartphone that's bordering more into phablet territory.

First impressions last, so the Blackberry Passport better be packing the goods for me to heft around such a overstuffed smartphone, Turns out I might be unto something here as the specs for this smartphone are impressive to say the least.

Running Blackberry 10.3 OS, it's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 chipset with a Quad-Core 2.2GHz Krait 400 CPU, Adreno 330 GPU with some 3GB of RAM. The microSD Slot support a 32GB SD Card that doubles up on the 32GB of Internal Memory.

What's a smartphone without a camera these days?

The Passport's got a massive 13Megapixel Camera that comes with a LED (Light emitting Diode) Flash, optical stabilization. It also does great 1080p video, recording at a rate of 60fps (frames per second). When it comes to connectivity, as it comes with 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11n and support for NFC, suggesting that you can use the Blackberry Passport as a Mobile Wallet wherever NFC is available.

All that raw power is encased in a steel frame that’s got baby-bottom soft yet grippable material on its back. Its keypad feels roomy and has the added innovation of being a Touchpad as well, like a gigantic touchable mouse. The Czech at Mobilenet.cz claims it's great to write on and especially easy to delete words by swiping to the left!

Its aesthetics are not quite fully metallic. 

But the fact it incorporates a bit of metal means that like the Samsung Galaxy Alpha as declared in my blog article entitled “Samsung Galaxy Alpha with Metallic Band - Last of the 5” smartphones with decreased Battery Life as the Luddite Camp gets Larger”, Blackberry’s realizing that a little metal makes your product look well built, sturdy and have a classy finish that'll appeals to the more business-minded customer.

What really has me sold is the Battery size, which is a whopping 3,450mAh, which should give you several days worth of talk-time. I’m still on my Luddite Perch as it relates to my liking of smartphones as explained in my blog article entitled “The Reason why I don't like Smartphones - Location Privacy and How to disable Location Services on Android and iOS”, but this spec alone in my mind gives the Blackberry Passport, in my book, a passing grade!

The Final Note – At US$720, Hip to Be Square is pushing the Phablet Trend against the Apple iPhone

This makes its prices of US$760 by September 2014 sound quite justified, especially as it's a productivity packed device as predicted in blog article entitled “Blackberry Passport coming in September 2014 - Squaring up again the competition in Portrait and Landscape Mode”.

So is the Blackberry Passport for you?

At US$760, the Blackberry Passport options make being Hip to be Square a bit of a risk. But coupled with possible Microsoft Office, BBM 2.0 and BBM Music as predicted my blog article entitled  “Blackberry Passport Specs revealed in Hands-on - Why Microsoft Office and BBM Music will make the Passport Hip to Be Square”, it's a bet worth making.