TLDR

Nice article, less technical detail and more real life use case examples. journalist and iphone user reviews Blackberries new Passport. After 4 weeks of reviewing he puts his iphone in a drawer and is now rocking the Passport as his daily driver.

SOME QUOTES

By now, the technical features of the Passport are well known to gadget aficionados: ... most importantly, a revolutionary three-row iteration of the famous, physical Blackberry keyboard, featuring well-spaced notably oversized keys.

REACTIONS Even seasoned Blackberry fans are shocked by the layout when they first see it. Numerous strangers have approached me to ask about the device. They are always men. The women I’ve shown the Passport to seem vaguely horrified by the thing

OS 10.3 - After a month with the Passport, it’s become clear that the updated Blackberry OS 10.3, combined with the enhanced speed and image-capture capabilities of the Passport’s Qualcomm processor, yield a machine that feels as fast as my iPhone 5 for just about every common smartphone task — including web- and Twitter-surfing on the Passport’s massive, beautifully detailed screen. I did get some lag when I used some of the advanced camera features, but this was compensated for by excellent, sometimes even artistic, photo quality.

USING - Because of its radically different form, the Blackberry Passport alters the very idea of a Smartphone in a manner that must be termed existential. With my iPhone, I’d gotten used to lazily holding it in my right hand, casually swiping through tweets and emails with my thumb as I drank coffee with my left. The Passport, on the other hand, demands the commitment of two hands, because (in my case, at least) the right thumb can’t get past the T button. That sounds like a drawback, and it certainly feels like one when, say, you’re using an umbrella or trying to keep a door open for someone in an office building lobby. But it also made me less tempted to use the Passport at times when a person really, really shouldn’t be using a Smartphone — such as when you’re stuck in traffic.

The massive keyboard, once you learn to use it properly (it takes a few weeks to really get your fingers up to speed on the new button size), has been a game-changer for my work. I’ve written whole articles on the Passport, something I never used to do with the iPhone or even the Q10.

The touch-sensitive sweep-scrolling feature built into the keyboard itself is a brilliant technological innovation, since it allows you to maximize the amount of time your fingers are positioned on the keys: I found this feature to be especially useful with Twitter, when I was trying to micro-edit Tweets in order to correct syntax or reduce character count — an often frustrating experience with any smartphone. On the Passport, I was able to lightly double-tap the keyboard, enter cursor-control mode, float the cursor surgically into exactly the correct spot with my thumb never leaving the keyboard, then lightly double-tap again to resume editing.

SIZE So to state the obvious: This business-oriented phone is hardly the ideal phone for, say, the beach or hiking trail.

CONCLUSIONS As for me, I’m hooked. The iPhone remains in its drawer. The Passport has become my everyday device. For a user who sees a Smartphone as something primarily designed for banging out short-to-medium length email, interacting on social media, taking and sharing family photos, and reading long-form content on the web, it’s the best machine I’ve ever owned.