 BlackBerry says we’re stuck in a rectangular world.
So its brought out a square smartphone, the Passport which is ‘the IMAX of productivity’. “We’ve been living in a rectangular world for quite some time,” writes Matt Young on BlackBerry’s blog and “has become a defacto approach to smartphone design, perhaps limiting innovations.”
“Just as a Passport is the universal symbol of mobility and was the inspiration for the size and form factor of this device”, he says, which has 4.5″ inch square full HD screen.
The troubled mobile maker says its new square innovation offers the same viewing space as a 5″ inch phone but with a better viewing experience because of the screen width.
It certainly looks peculiar next to a normal smartphone, but Passport’s squareness is a point of difference in a flooded market, if nothing else.
The optimal number of characters on a line in a book is 66 characters – current smartphones show approx. 40 and BlackBerry says Passport will show 60 characters, thus is ideal for reading e-books, viewing documents and surfing the web. A square screen mean no issues with portrait or landscape modes.
The Canadian company are targeting the 4.5″ Passport at professionals like architects, writers, and healthcare workers.
But the real question is, can Passport save the phone maker that has less than 1% share in most markets, globally. In Australia, BlackBerry powers just 0.5% of phones.
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