BlackBerry Passport gets early hands-on. QWERTY keyboard doubles up as a touchpad

The Passport is BlackBerry’s next big thing and they are doing things differently with its squarish, Optimus VU-like form factor with a simplified 3 row QWERTY keyboard at the bottom. Targeted for a September release, the BlackBerry Passport has gotten another extensive hands-on and this time it shows off its hidden touchpad on the keyboard. With your thumbs being on the QWERTY keyboard most of the time, having a full-on touchpad at the bottom seems to be more practical than the usual swiping on-screen or on a traditional trackpad in the middle.

To recap on the specs, this quirky looking device has the means to match up with other flagship models. The front 4.5″ display does a high resolution 1440×1440 pixels and it is powered by a Quad-Core Snapdragon 800 processor with 3GB of RAM. It also gets a 13MP main camera with a 2MP front facing unit and it is juiced up with a large 3,450mAh capacity battery. The keyboard may look simple with just 3 rows, but the Passport is able to extend additional set of keys onto the display. On the software side, it will be released with their latest BlackBerry 10.3 that offers BlackBerry Assistant.

Check out its hands-on video and photos after the break.

[ SOURCE, VIA ]