 For years, Blackberry was a smartphone for getting stuff done. The ideal Blackberry user doesn't have time to mess around, doesn't have time for games, and definitely doesn't have time for your nonsense. Blackberry's new Passport is just a smartphone for that person, but for the rest of us, it's one of the strangest phones on shelves today. The $249 Passport, or $599 unlocked, is what you would get if you took a classic Blackberry and stretched it in all four corners, making it a giant square slab of a device. It weighs nearly 7 ounces, measures over 5 inches tall, and over 3 and a half inches wide. It's actually the same size as a standard international Passport. It's a solid, hefty device, it's got a steel frame and a soft touch finish, and it's wider than almost every other phone you can buy, including Samsung's new Galaxy Note 4 and the new Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The Passport is awkward in your hands and awkward in your pockets, and I definitely dropped it once or twice in the few weeks I've been using it. Its awkward dimensions are thanks to its giant square display. It has a 4.5 inch high resolution IPS LCD panel with 1440 by 1440 pixels and a dense 453 PPI. It looks great, it's got wide viewing angles and no visible pixels, and you can really see a lot on this screen. It's great for reading, great for navigating spreadsheets, and great for plowing through email. But unsurprisingly, it's not great for watching video or playing most games, because no matter what you do, there are annoying black bars above and below whatever you're watching. But if you live your life in a spreadsheet, the square screen is perfect for that. Below the display is a three row physical keyboard. It's an honest to goodness throwback to what Blackberry is best known for. It's similar to the Blackberry keyboards of yesterday, but it's not really as good, because it's too wide and it's impossible to type on with one hand. Worse, the space bar is strangely jammed up into the last row of keys instead of below the letters like every other keyboard ever. It's something I can never get used to and I'm still way faster on a good virtual keyboard. I'm wondering why Blackberry just didn't extend the phone another quarter inch and put in a fourth row, considering the Passport's already a massive phone. The keyboard does have some cool tricks. It's got a capacitive touch layer so you can swipe on it to scroll through web pages and email, and you can also use it to move the cursor around when you're typing, but I found it's just easier to use the touch screen for doing things like that. The Passport runs Blackberry OS 10.3. It's been refined and tweaked and looks a whole lot nicer than it did a couple of years ago. But it's still the same interface, heavily reliant on swipes and gestures, and it's not particularly intuitive. Blackberry 10 centers around widgets, app icons, and the hub. The hub's a good idea. It attempts to group all of your notifications in one place, but it's still not as good a notification experience as Android or even iOS. Little things like marking a bunch of Twitter notifications as red still take way too many taps, and for some reason it insists on showing all of the appointments in all of my shared calendars instead of just the ones I actually want to see. It's the area where Blackberry has the most potential, but it's still unfulfilled. But the biggest new feature in Blackberry 10.3 is the new virtual assistant. It's like Siri, it's like Google Now, it's like Cortana, but it's just not as good. This virtual assistant can perform web searches, make calendar appointments, set reminders, and do more with just your voice. It's intelligent and it's got good voice parsing technology, but it's often slower than the options on other platforms. To fix its longstanding problem of no apps, Blackberry is now preloading the Amazon App Store on the Passport. It's a huge step forward, the Amazon Store has many more apps than Blackberry Store ever did, but it's still missing popular options like Instagram, Snapchat, and more. Installing apps from the Amazon Store is a chore. It requires multiple screens, button presses, and loading bars before the app is actually usable. For the people that this phone is built for, the Amazon App Store provides more than enough apps, but if you want to use the latest messaging app or post photos to Instagram, you should probably look elsewhere. The Passport is the most powerful hardware Blackberry has ever put in a phone. It's fast most of the time and the browser is really quick and responsive, but if I try to multitask or do a lot of things at once, the system definitely slows down. Opening the camera can take multiple seconds and sometimes it just doesn't happen at all. That's pretty unacceptable for a high end device in 2014, and certainly not one with as much RAM as the Passport. The camera is the best camera Blackberry has ever used, but that's not really saying much. It's a 16 megapixel unit with flash and autofocus and it can shoot 1080p video at 30 or 60 frames per second. Image quality is okay, it's not great, but the bigger problem is it's just slow and it defaults to the Passport's odd square format, even though you can't share any of those square photos to Instagram. You can't change the Passport's battery, but the integrated cell is really big and it lasts for a really long time. There wasn't a single day where the Passport didn't last all day for me, and many times I could go two days without plugging it in. Two days of getting stuff done, just like Blackberry intended. But when everything is added up, the Blackberry Passport is a niche smartphone if there ever was one. Blackberry's built a phone that's a shrine to everything the company has done for the past decade and a half. It's a big, productivity powerhouse that's designed more for work than fun. It even looks like it's wearing a suit. But despite getting a number of things right, the Passport fails on some obvious ones, like the keyboard that makes no sense and its giant, awkward to use dimensions. It's the perfect phone for a very select few people, and it's clearly the best that Blackberry can do. But for the rest of us that left Blackberry's behind years ago, Blackberry's best isn't good enough, and there's nothing in the Passport that's going to bring us back.
 For years, Blackberry was a smartphone for getting stuff done.
 The ideal Blackberry user doesn't have time to mess around, doesn't have time for games,
 and definitely doesn't have time for your nonsense.
 Blackberry's new Passport is just a smartphone for that person, but for the rest of us, it's
 one of the strangest phones on shelves today.
 The $249 Passport, or $599 unlocked, is what you would get if you took a classic Blackberry
 and stretched it in all four corners, making it a giant square slab of a device.
 It weighs nearly 7 ounces, measures over 5 inches tall, and over 3 and a half inches
 wide.
 It's actually the same size as a standard international Passport.
 It's a solid, hefty device, it's got a steel frame and a soft touch finish, and it's wider
 than almost every other phone you can buy, including Samsung's new Galaxy Note 4 and
 the new Apple iPhone 6 Plus.
 The Passport is awkward in your hands and awkward in your pockets, and I definitely
 dropped it once or twice in the few weeks I've been using it.
 Its awkward dimensions are thanks to its giant square display.
 It has a 4.5 inch high resolution IPS LCD panel with 1440 by 1440 pixels and a dense
 453 PPI.
 It looks great, it's got wide viewing angles and no visible pixels, and you can really
 see a lot on this screen.
 It's great for reading, great for navigating spreadsheets, and great for plowing through
 email.
 But unsurprisingly, it's not great for watching video or playing most games, because no matter
 what you do, there are annoying black bars above and below whatever you're watching.
 But if you live your life in a spreadsheet, the square screen is perfect for that.
 Below the display is a three row physical keyboard.
 It's an honest to goodness throwback to what Blackberry is best known for.
 It's similar to the Blackberry keyboards of yesterday, but it's not really as good,
 because it's too wide and it's impossible to type on with one hand.
 Worse, the space bar is strangely jammed up into the last row of keys instead of below
 the letters like every other keyboard ever.
 It's something I can never get used to and I'm still way faster on a good virtual keyboard.
 I'm wondering why Blackberry just didn't extend the phone another quarter inch and
 put in a fourth row, considering the Passport's already a massive phone.
 The keyboard does have some cool tricks.
 It's got a capacitive touch layer so you can swipe on it to scroll through web pages
 and email, and you can also use it to move the cursor around when you're typing, but
 I found it's just easier to use the touch screen for doing things like that.
 The Passport runs Blackberry OS 10.3.
 It's been refined and tweaked and looks a whole lot nicer than it did a couple of years
 ago.
 But it's still the same interface, heavily reliant on swipes and gestures, and it's
 not particularly intuitive.
 Blackberry 10 centers around widgets, app icons, and the hub.
 The hub's a good idea.
 It attempts to group all of your notifications in one place, but it's still not as good
 a notification experience as Android or even iOS.
 Little things like marking a bunch of Twitter notifications as red still take way too many
 taps, and for some reason it insists on showing all of the appointments in all of my shared
 calendars instead of just the ones I actually want to see.
 It's the area where Blackberry has the most potential, but it's still unfulfilled.
 But the biggest new feature in Blackberry 10.3 is the new virtual assistant.
 It's like Siri, it's like Google Now, it's like Cortana, but it's just not as good.
 This virtual assistant can perform web searches, make calendar appointments, set reminders,
 and do more with just your voice.
 It's intelligent and it's got good voice parsing technology, but it's often slower
 than the options on other platforms.
 To fix its longstanding problem of no apps, Blackberry is now preloading the Amazon App
 Store on the Passport.
 It's a huge step forward, the Amazon Store has many more apps than Blackberry Store ever
 did, but it's still missing popular options like Instagram, Snapchat, and more.
 Installing apps from the Amazon Store is a chore.
 It requires multiple screens, button presses, and loading bars before the app is actually
 usable.
 For the people that this phone is built for, the Amazon App Store provides more than enough
 apps, but if you want to use the latest messaging app or post photos to Instagram, you should
 probably look elsewhere.
 The Passport is the most powerful hardware Blackberry has ever put in a phone.
 It's fast most of the time and the browser is really quick and responsive, but if I try
 to multitask or do a lot of things at once, the system definitely slows down.
 Opening the camera can take multiple seconds and sometimes it just doesn't happen at all.
 That's pretty unacceptable for a high end device in 2014, and certainly not one with
 as much RAM as the Passport.
 The camera is the best camera Blackberry has ever used, but that's not really saying
 much.
 It's a 16 megapixel unit with flash and autofocus and it can shoot 1080p video at 30 or 60 frames
 per second.
 Image quality is okay, it's not great, but the bigger problem is it's just slow and
 it defaults to the Passport's odd square format, even though you can't share any
 of those square photos to Instagram.
 You can't change the Passport's battery, but the integrated cell is really big and
 it lasts for a really long time.
 There wasn't a single day where the Passport didn't last all day for me, and many times
 I could go two days without plugging it in.
 Two days of getting stuff done, just like Blackberry intended.
 But when everything is added up, the Blackberry Passport is a niche smartphone if there ever
 was one.
 Blackberry's built a phone that's a shrine to everything the company has done for the
 past decade and a half.
 It's a big, productivity powerhouse that's designed more for work than fun.
 It even looks like it's wearing a suit.
 But despite getting a number of things right, the Passport fails on some obvious ones, like
 the keyboard that makes no sense and its giant, awkward to use dimensions.
 It's the perfect phone for a very select few people, and it's clearly the best that
 Blackberry can do.
 But for the rest of us that left Blackberry's behind years ago, Blackberry's best isn't
 good enough, and there's nothing in the Passport that's going to bring us back.