'Unusual' Blackberry Passport Hits Indian Shores Before Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Blackberry's highly talked about high-end Passport smartphone has finally come to India. The smartphone is priced at a staggering Rs 50,000 (£500, $811).

The Blackberry Passport is also available for pre-ordering, online via Amazon India and Blackberry's online store. Blackberry Passport will be available in physical retail stores in India starting 10 October.

Apart from its high-end technical specifications, the Blackberry passport captures the eye by virtue of its 'perfect square' outer form factor, which seems a rather unusual design for a smartphone.

This unusual outer structure is bound to give off a feel of carrying a hard paper bound document in the pocket, rather than of carrying a smartphone. This aspect adds to the weird hardware designing of the smartphone.

However, the unusual designing may just end up being eye-catching, rather than weird. This is turn, could help the Blackberry Passport grab more eyeballs in India than other high-end smartphones from rival brands.

Blackberry Passport comes with the following key technical specifications:

• 4.5in LCD display
• Blackberry 10.3 OS; straight out of the box
• Brand new touch keyboard
• Quad-Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor
• 13MP rear camera, and a 2MP front snapper
• 3GB RAM
• 32GB internal storage
• MicroSD card slot for expansion up to 128 GB
• 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi (dual-band and direct) and microUSB connectivity
• Updated Blackberry Hub
• 3,450 mAh battery, with a claimed 30 hour backup time

Along with the above tech-specs, Blackberry's Passport also comes with an exclusive personal digital assistant (PDA) called the Blackberry Assistant which is claimed to help users execute tasks quickly such as responding to important emails, scheduling a meeting or getting directions, apart from helping in other user tasks/activities.

The BlackBerry Passport's keyboard combines a physical keyboard with gestures seen on a touchscreen keyboard

On paper, the key technical specifications of Blackberry's latest Passport seem impressive, and are in line with the standard specifications that are usually expected within any high-end smartphone.

However, a downside of Blackberry's Passport could be its Rs 50K price tag.

One advantage that Blackberry has gained is its perfect release timing. With the Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus yet to get a release date in India, Blackberry's Passport might just be successful in grabbing a significant chunk of Apple loyalists.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen if the Blackberry Passport smartphone indeed turns out to be Blackberry's 'passport' for good fortune in India.