1. g33kphr33k's Avatar
    BlackBerry’s square-screened phone to free us from our “rectangular world” | Ars Technica

    The comments are more interesting than the article. Here's the article:

    "Most smartphones produced in 2014 will follow a certain design playbook: rectangular screen, a few buttons around the edges, and just enough thickness to house the internals and the requisite battery. One could argue that this is the idealized design for a touchscreen phone, arrived at after years of research and development and even more years of booming sales. BlackBerry would argue that all phones look like this because innovation is dead.

    That's the line the company pushes in its latest blog post to promote the square-screened BlackBerry Passport, seen above. We're all "stuck in a rectangular world," it says, and while the rectangular smartphone is a "great ergonomic design that drives content, media consumption and quick communications," the shape is "perhaps limiting innovations."

    The Passport's 4.5-inch, 1440�1440 display is "like the IMAX of productivity" and can display more information from spreadsheets or webpages or e-books without as much scrolling or flipping between portrait and landscape modes. Like the BlackBerry Q10, it uses a physical keyboard augmented by some onscreen keys.

    The Passport is a play for BlackBerry's "traditional" work-oriented user base, where the earlier BlackBerry Z10 and Z30 were efforts to break into the post-iPhone consumer smartphone space. Though the Passport may well be preferable for spreadsheets and word processing, that square screen will be much less useful for widescreen movies, and its wide, blocky design will entirely prohibit one-handed use.

    The Passport is expected to appear later this year, and it will launch with BlackBerry 10.3 (at least, according to early hands-on previews). Though BlackBerry is still losing money and its presence in the modern�smartphone market is negligible, its latest financial report indicates that losses may be stabilizing."

    The comments shred the idea of the Passport so I was wondering if anyone fancied giving some pros as it's all negative?

    Posted via CB10
    07-08-14 10:44 AM
  2. m1kr0's Avatar
    Yes, those comments. Ignorance is bliss....

    Z10 STL100-1, OS 10.2.1.3247
    07-08-14 10:58 AM
  3. Dunt Dunt Dunt's Avatar
    BlackBerry gave you the Pros as they see them.... it's big, it's square, it's different.

    As a work device - emails, documents, webpages ... this will be a very good two handed format. Using non native apps, viewing movies... it will be wasted space.

    People have different needs and this device isn't made for just everyone.
    07-08-14 11:08 AM
  4. Timbosaurus's Avatar
    I had a pretty similar reaction to many of the commenters, before seeing it in somebody's hand. Demo units (even dummy plastic ones) in stores will stand out a lot from the rest of the rack, and will overcome a lot of the "it won't fit in my pocket / the corners are razor sharp / it's hideously ugly" nonsense that I've seen spouted on here lately.

    Once this device is out in the wild, and the actual reviews start appearing, a lot of people who haven't already sworn themselves and their first-born child to another manufacturer will probably find it quite intriguing. Even if only a tiny percentage of those convert into sales, we will be onto a winner.
    07-08-14 11:09 AM

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