The BlackBerry Passport was officially unveiled by BlackBerry back in June. Without a doubt it has to be one of the more unique smartphones around, and one of the more interesting design choices made by BlackBerry. Not only has BlackBerry tried to promote the 1:1 aspect design ratio, but now in a recent blog post, they have revealed (they had previously published their post a bit earlier than expected) why their gesture-based keyboard will make life easier for users.
Now BlackBerry has been known for their physical QWERTY keyboards, and anyone who has ever used a BlackBerry device can probably attest to the wonderful tactile feedback they get from the keyboard. However with the Passport, BlackBerry decided to incorporate some touch controls and did away with the the toolbelt row of keys.
According to BlackBerry, “The revolutionary new physical keyboard is responsive to touch, so you have more ways to control your smartphone without having to use the touchscreen. With rows of touch-sensitive physical keys, BlackBerry Passport combines the efficiency of tactile typing with touchscreen-like navigation to deliver on that productivity promise.”
The company goes on to list advantages to their new keyboard, such as offering up faster scrolling, more intuitive cursor control, smart contextual keys, flick to type, easier deletion, and easy entering of accented characters. It definitely sounds good on paper, but how will it hold up in real life? Well we guess we’ll just have to try it for ourselves, but what do you guys think?
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