BlackBerry officially launches its £529 Passport phone

In what is being dubbed a last-ditch attempt by BlackBerry to crawl back market share from its rivals, the Canadian firm has officially launched its Passport phone.

After being unveiled at an event in June, chief executive John Chen has been teasing the square phone's features ever since.

And at a launch event earlier today, BlackBerry revealed that the 4.5-inch device is now available in the UK, US, France, Germany, and Canada - and will run Android apps from the Amazon Appstore.

Prices in the various regions are £529 in the UK, $599 in the US, €649 in France and Germany, and $699 in Canada, when bought from ShopBlackBerry.com.

The BlackBerry Passport will also be available through Amazon.com, and the retailer will be announcing its pricing 'soon'. 
'As we set out to design BlackBerry Passport, we were guided by a simple yet challenging idea - to set aside the limitations of traditional design and to instead simply build a device that fundamentally changes the way business professionals get work done on their smartphone,' said Mr Chen.

PASSPORT SPECIFICATIONS

The BlackBerry Passport has a full HD 4.5-inch square screen, which is said to offer a similar viewing space to a 5-inch phone, but ‘an even better viewing experience’ because of the screen’s width.
It has 1440x1440 pixel resolution display with a pixel density of 453PPI.
Other specifications include a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage plus expandable storage via microSD card up to 64GB.
There is also a 13MP rear camera and a 2MP front camera.
The touchscreen is accompanied by a physical keyboard, and the Passport runs BlackBerry 10 OS 10.3.
This software features BlackBerry Blend, which lets users BlackBerry content to other devices including PCs and Android phones, as well as the Amazon Appstore.
This means that Android apps from the Amazon store can be installed on the BlackBerry device.