BlackBerry prices Passport at Rs 49,990 in India

Passport could help firm regain lost ground, is the first square phone that comes with a larger 4.5-inch touch screen coupled with a multi-tasking three-row QWERTY keyboard

Blackberry, on Monday, launched its latest invention - BlackBerry Passport, one of the most innovative smartphones in recent times, in India with a price tag of Rs 49,990. The announcement comes within a week of its global launch.

Passport, which could help BlackBerry to regain its lost ground in the devices segment, is unique and the first square phone that comes with a larger 4.5-inch touch screen coupled with a multi-tasking three-row QWERTY keyboard that can be labelled as the most innovative keypad.

The keypad just does not stop behaving like any other QWERTY keypad. It is the touch sensitive, capable of working as the cursor control that completes suggestive commands and could even capable of abolishing the usage of the delete key. While the display is touch-enabled, one does not actually needs to use the screen for giving commands as the keyboard can do it all.

"The target segment is the power professionals," said Sunil Lalvani, managing director, BlackBerry India. Lalvani, who has been trying his hands on the new device for quite some time now, also said he never required to use a laptop, while he travels, ever since he started using BlackBerry Passport.

The long-term evolution (LTE) enabled Passport comes with a battery that can last for up to 30 hours, BlackBerry said.

The square screen ensures that the user never needs to change the orientation of the device for a better view. This definitely works well for the professionals to work on spreadsheets and documents without zooming.

"The phone is built on feedbacks from users and giving better battery life and a wider view. The display is ideal for those who have to see a lot of Excel sheets or read documents," Lalvani said.

Analysts, however, are sceptical about the pricing of BlackBerry's Passport. "They always go wrong on pricing though they make really good devices," said an independent analyst who has been using the Passport for the past four days. Lalvani, however, believes the handset has been priced very competitive.

"This indicates our roadmap for the future devices," Lalvani said, adding that the company is set to launch BlackBerry Classic within this fiscal year.

Passport comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 with 2.2GHz Quad-Core CPUs (MSM8974-AA) processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB flash memory, expandable up to 128GB.

Passport comes with BlackBerry 10.3 operating system coupled with BlackBerry Blend - a new app that allows display of BlackBerry phone contents and notifications on all other computing devices. Passport comes preloaded with Amazon App store to download and install Android apps.

The company said Passport will be available for pre-order from Monday till 10 October exclusively on Amazon India. Consumers, who will pre-order Passport, will get an Amazon India voucher worth Rs 5,000 and 5000 Jet privilege miles. The device will be available in retail stores starting 10 October.