Welcome to BlackBerry's Bold 'Work All the Time' Gambit

The opening page of the marketing material handed out with BlackBerry’s new Passport device reads, “How to be a success at everything: How I learned to get the most out of every week’s 168 hours.” It’s perhaps the most utilitarian pitch ever for a smartphone. This makes sense, given BlackBerry’s history as an e-mailing dynamo for white-collar workers, as well as the Passport’s target audience of investors, health-care professionals, and government employees. The slogan, though, verges on depressing. It never even entertains the notion of entertainment, and, sadly, the device suffers from the same failings.

The Passport is a weird-looking thing. It’s square-shaped with a three-row physical keyboard at the bottom of the device. A lot of pros come with this design choice. The most obvious is the keyboard, which works as well as a keyboard ever has and allows people to fire off e-mails with impunity. According to BlackBerry, the square design also makes it possible to display 60 characters per line across the screen comfortably, vs. the average of 40 characters on other smartphones, which BlackBerry disparagingly refers to as “all-touch” devices. There’s some truth to this claim. Reading websites, e-mails, and documents is, in my experience with a test unit, more pleasant on the BlackBerry than on your standard rectangle-shaped smartphone.