BlackBerry Explains The Passport, Its Square Tablet… Phone Thing

BlackBerry previously gave us a brief sneak peek at a device that’s as category-busting as the revolutionary Padfone, called the Passport. I expressed my …uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the design decisions made in creating this 4.5-inch square thing with a hardware keyboard then, but now it’s BlackBerry’s turn to articulate some of their reasoning behind the Passport, with a blog post in which they studiously avoid calling it either a phone or a tablet directly.

The blog post asks “Why?” in italics on a line all its own, so BlackBerry at least is aware this is a weird device that has some people, like myself, scratching their heads. The 4.5-inch screen on the gadget is square, not rectangular, meaning it’s almost as wide as two iPhones placed side-by-side.

The answer to “Why?” begins with something about academic typology, which isn’t a great way to explain a design decision for a mobile device in my opinion. But wait! The academic stuff means that the Passport is supposedly the optimal size for reading e-books, paging through documents and reading the text-heavy portions of the web. WHICH IS WHAT BUSINESS PEOPLE DO!

BlackBerry blogger Matt Young goes on to articulate a few different scenarios where the Passport’s unique ID will make it an ideal digital companion, including for architects and real estate professionals switching between blueprints and contract docs, doctors checking x-rays and patient info forms, fianciers watching the stock market bob up and down, and writers looking for the joys only a real physical keyboard can bring.

I remain skeptical, but BlackBerry is at least taking a different approach to the smartphone/tablet/whatever-mobile-computer, the design of all which has been largely normalized over the past few years. Basically, though, at this point the only question that remains is whether this is better or worse idea than the noveltylicious curved screen smartphone.