BlackBerry is struggling hard to regain their position (if not, even just to keep surviving) in the smartphone market, and the past several attempts have failed. BlackBerry sold itself, changed the officials, reduced the price, and released the full-touchscreen smartphones, all of them to be in vain. The company posted $23 million of profit in Q1 despite falling revenues, which can seed a little amount of hope among the BlackBerry officials and BlackBerry lovers (very few in numbers whatsoever :p).
BlackBerry has taken one more step to struggle further- CEO John Chen yesterday announced the brand new two smartphones- BlackBerry Passport and Classic. No official specs have been detailed, and the CEO mentioned that the phones will be ready for 2015 (they will be released earlier though, in September, according to the resources). The hands-on was shown by John Chen, and as we can see, the two are somewhat similar- in performance but have different screen sizes. As we can see in the picture, the BlackBerry Passport is similar to the size of passport (as the name matches), having sharp edges while the BlackBerry Classic has blunt edges, and probably lies under the Q series. Lets compare the preliminary unofficial specifications of the two phones:
| BlackBerry Passport | BlackBerry Classic | |
| Display | 1440 x 1440 pixels, 4.5 inches (~453 ppi pixel density) | 1440 x 1440 pixels, 3.5 inches (~582 ppi pixel density) |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Quad Core CPU, Adreno 330 GPU | Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Quad Core CPU, Adreno 330 GPU |
| RAM | 3 GB RAM | 3 GB RAM |
| Storage | microSD upto 64 GB | microSD upto 64 GB |
| Battery | 3400 mAh | 2500 mAh |
| Camera | 8 MP (back), 1080p video recording, 2 MP (front) | 8 MP (back), 1080p video recording 2 MP (front) |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspoBluetooth 4.0, LTE, microUSB v2.0 | Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE |
| Keyboard |
QWERTY | QWERTY |
| Weight and Dimensions | — | — |
| System | BlackBerry 10.1 OS | BlackBerry 10.1 OS |
John Chen in the bygone days did not actually talk much about the BlackBerry Classic; but he indeed used to discuss a lot about the BlackBerry Passport- its expected features, specifications and all the factors: and the Passport is said to be available in two color options- Black and White. He also mentioned about the accessories that will be available in a diverse range, and wide varieties. This is certainly a good news for the rare BlackBerry lovers that BlackBerry is releasing the phones with such high-end specs, but the competition will fierce, as the rumored iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are also releasing alongside. There are already too many high-end smartphones for BlackBerry to compete with, and it does not even have a certain numbers of fans too. Still, let’s pray the BlackBerry Passport and Classic will put some impact in the smartphone market, and regain some position BlackBerry has lost in the past few years. Good luck BlackBerry!
