BlackBerry Passport - Initial Hands On

Over the years I’ve played about with a variety of phones running fledging mobile OS’s. Be it Windows Phone, BlackBerry OS, Firefox OS or even Ubuntu Phone. For the last week or so I’ve been using the BlackBerry Passport and I’m loving it.

The BlackBerry Passport is a well spec’d, here’s what you get:

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 with 2.2GHz Quad-Core CPUs (MSM8974-AA).
GPU: Adreno 330, 450MHz.
Internal Memory: 32 GB.
RAM: 3 GB.
Display: 4.5″ diagonal 1440 x 1440 resolution, 453 PPI, 1:1 aspect ratio.
Rear Camera: 13 megapixel auto-focus, Optical image stabilization (OIS), 5-element f2.0 lens, Back Side Illumination, 1080p HD video recording at 60fps.
Front Camera: 2MP fixed-focus, Image and video stabilization, 3x digital zoom, 720p HD video recording.
Battery: 3450mAH integrated non-removable battery.
Dimensions: Height 128 mm Width 90.3 mm Depth 9.3 mm.
Weight: 196g.
Extras: Touch-enabled keyboard, BlackBerry 10 OS, Removable microSD memory card—slot located under back cover (Up to 128 GB), On-screen or LED indicator, Miracast, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC.
Network bands: FD-LTE 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 20 (2100/1900/1800/1700/850/2600/900/700/700/800 MHz), HSPA+ 1, 2, 4, 5/6, 8 (2100/1900/1700/850/900 MHz), Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz).
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n for 2.4GHz, 802.11 a/n for 5GHz, 802.11 ac for 5GHz.
Sensors: Accelerometer, Magnetometer, Gyroscope, Time of Flight (ToF), Ambient light.
BlackBerry® Tag with NFC technology enables communication between BlackBerry smartphones and other NFC-enabled devices with a tap.

Rather intriguingly BlackBerry 10 allows you to install Android apps via the pre-installed Amazon App Store, so I’ve been installing lots of my favourite apps, finding and installing actual native BlackBerry apps is proving difficult as the BlackBerry Store is full of a lot of ported Android apps.

I’ve taken a load of pictures of the Passport and it is a great looking and well built device.