Blackberry’s new square-screened device, the Passport, has been put through the tech reviewer wringer since it was introduced two days ago. As reviewers marveled at its giant screen, fumbled with its truncated keyboard, and decried its lack of apps, the smartphone’s unusual shape inspired all sorts of comparisons:
A slice of cheese
“The craziest thing about the Passport is its American-cheese-size 4.5-inch touch screen,” a WSJ columnist writes, accompanying the observation with a much-appreciated photo showing the screen covered with cheese. Her conclusion: “The Passport has some neat tricks and longer battery life than the competition, but it’s living in the past.”
A UPS electronic clipboard
The Passport reminded the Financial Times (paywall) of “a deluxe version of devices lugged about by the delivery men when collecting signatures.” The conclusion: “The worry is that the ship has already sailed for BlackBerry.”
A Pop-Tart
Typing on one is like typing on the breakfast pastry, David Pogue of Yahoo Tech writes, adding “this is not a one-handable phone.” His ruling: “Public opinion is a big battleship to turn around. And unfortunately for BlackBerry, the tide is against it.”
A Cadillac Escalade
Like something built in Detroit, the Passport is “big, wide, heavy, solid and trimmed with silvery steel accents,” the Toronto Globe and Mail said. The bottom line: “This device combines many of the useful features of a smartphone and a tablet, in a way no one in industry has done before.”
An actual passport
The back of the phone is “actually vaguely reminiscent of a passport if you stand ten meters away and kind of squint a bit,” Australia’s Gizmodo reports. Their conclusion: “We’re currently filing it in the ‘so-crazy-it-might-just-work’ category.”