A new challenger appears! But is it a worthy adversary in today's high-end smartphone market? Yes and no, but mostly no

Oct 2, 2015 15:00 GMT  ·  By

Ever since the launch of BlackBerry OS 10 and its companion device, the Z10, brand fans and BlackBerry owners alike look with great anticipation at every piece of news and leaked info about new devices being in the works. The reason is simple: a fervent hope that this time it’s going to be different, that whichever device comes next will be just perfect in terms of both hardware capabilities and software features. Suffice to say, we’re still waiting.

A step up in terms of design over the already impressive-looking original BlackBerry Passport, the latest edition of BlackBerry’s flagship device is made of hard, cold, shiny, silver metal. For this reason, it shall be henceforth referred to as… the Silverport.

As shown by the specifications matrix below, it’s also heavier, taller, wider (barely) but thinner.  

Passport Silver Edition Passport Black Edition
Screen 4.5" @ 1440x1440, 453PPI, 24-bit IPS
Frame Bend-free metal Bendy plastic & metal
CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.2GHz Quad-Core
GPU Adreno 330, 450MHz GPU
Memory 3 GB
Storage 32 GB built-in Flash + up to 128 GB microSD
Height 131 mm (5.17") 128 mm (5.04")
Width 90.5 mm (3.56") 90.3 mm (3.56")
Thickness 9.25 mm (0.36") 9.3 mm (0.36")
Weight 205 grams (7.23 oz) 196 grams (6.91 oz)
Battery 3,450 mAh integrated non-removable battery
Rear Camera 13 MP with autofocus, LED flash, f/2.0 lens and OIS

First impressions

Whereas the original Passport’s rubbery back cover is prone to fingerprints and accumulates all sorts of marks and micro-scratches in time, the Silver Edition uses a kind of textured plastic that feels nice to the touch but has less grip and seems to have a sweet spot for collecting dust.

As in the black Passport’s case, the upper side of the back cover is removable, to provide access to the nanoSIM and microSD slots. It’s also made of silver-painted plastic, a choice that makes sense but removes a little from the device’s otherwise premium look.

But the similarities end here, as the newer model comes with a twist (read: inconvenience). The camera’s flash module is completely encased in the removable cover, which is thus considerably harder to remove and put back in place. Speaking of the camera, its lens is surrounded by a metallic ring with fine grooves - another favorite spot for dust specks.

BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - Packaging
BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - Packaging

The migration process

Once the new Passport is in your hands, the natural thing to do would be to fire up BlackBerry Link and use the automated device migration feature. Right? Not exactly, since this can be a very time-consuming process (at least 15 minutes for as little as 2GB of data) that can even leave you with a malfunctioning device if you’re unlucky.

… which is exactly what happened when I moved my accounts, data and settings to the Silverport.

When the process finished (after an unreasonably long time plus the mandatory device reboot), there were no photos to be seen in the built-in Pictures app.

Turns out they had been transferred to the new device and the file manager displayed them, albeit without a thumbnail and no chance of navigating through them by swiping. The Pictures app showed nothing, however, because it hadn’t triggered its usual indexing process, but an additional, manual reboot did the trick (well, partially, to be exact, since the order of the photos was screwed up for good).

So there you have it: another classic Blackberry mystery solved.

But that’s not all: about an hour later, an OTA software update notification popped up announcing the availability of Blackberry OS 10.3.2.2639. After a quick 36 MB download and a (looong) reboot, the results were rather grim: a slow, unresponsive Hub that behaved as if default settings were in effect even though the menus confirmed that wasn’t the case and refused to delete messages.

Applying the “emergency 5-swipe reset” maneuver to the Hub did nothing, and (yes, another) reboot didn’t help either. The only solution was to remove all email accounts and add them back manually. Sounds easy? It wasn’t, as removing an Exchange account hanged the entire device for 15 minutes, until I performed a forced, yes, you guessed it, restart.

BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - back with top cover removed
BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - back with top cover removed

What was improved…

The most important improvement is the Silverport’s metal frame or, to be specific, the fact that it prevents the smartphone from bending, as its predecessor did. There’s not much talk about it on the web, not even in BlackBerry-specialized outlets but BlackBerry’s Bendgate is real; each and every black Passport I’ve seen was affected to varying degrees.

Well, that seems to be history now, as the Silver Edition doesn’t bend… with the added bonus that the screen doesn’t fall off anymore!

Another major nuisance resolved is the unlock button on the upper side, which is now level with the surface instead of protruding, preventing any more accidental unlocks (and unintentional photo-taking, calling or texting/emailing).

The physical QWERTY keyboard, intended as a major (if not THE) selling point of the Passport range, is now a bit easier to use thanks to the slightly increased bottom bezel.

When it comes to radio signal strength, this is BlackBerry’s strongest offering ever, and an extremely competitive one overall. Both Wi-Fi and GSM have been improved over the black Passport (which was already pretty good), especially in less-than-ideal conditions.

Faraway wireless AP? Silverport has you covered when its older sibling scrambles to find a more suitable access point. GSM signal drops once you go inside your home or office building? Not a problem either.

Silver versus Black (indoor GSM signal)
Silver versus Black (indoor GSM signal)

An unlikely area that performs better on this Passport model is video recording, but not in the way you would expect. While recording continuously (LED turned on), both devices stopped at around the same mark, but while the black nearly depleted its battery and completely froze after 2 hours and 38 minutes, the silver threw an error message after 2 hours 33 minutes and still had about 30% of its battery left.

… and what wasn’t

I’ll start by stating the obvious: the Silver Edition Passport runs the same OS as its darker counterpart, so it comes with exactly the same features and, sadly, pitfalls.

The occasional sluggishness is there, regardless if you’re using a first-party or third-party app. Your photo library still gets re-indexed every time the phone is restarted, which you might end up doing multiple times after a software update, especially if it doesn’t go too well.

The Silverport gets hot whenever it’s doing something even slightly resource intensive, like copying data, taking or restoring backups, using a GPS/navigation application and so on. However, since it has a metal frame, it seems to get even hotter than the Black Passport, and you’ll feel it, especially during longer voice calls. Strangely enough, the upper right corner (including the metal ring around the camera lens) seems to get hotter than other areas.

The same temperature increase happens if you connect the smartphone to a charger that’s able to supply more than BlackBerry’s own 1.3 mAh one, regardless of the type (wall/car) or if it’s a quick/fast charge one or not.

The worst part is that it also seems to increase charging time, so it’s probably best to stick to the original BlackBerry charger. The table below shows results obtained after 5 charging cycles to full battery on both the original Passport and the Silver Edition.  

Silver Edition Black Edition
Original charger 2 hours 20 minutes 2 hours 20 minutes
Samsung quick-charger 2 hours 30 minutes 2 hours 50 minutes

As previously mentioned, the keyboard has been improved in terms of usability, but for some inexplicable reason, the keys feel less sturdy than on the black Passport, almost a little fragile. The Silverport’s enter key was a little shoddy when not pressed exactly in its center, an issue that was never noticed on the older models.

Another thing that’s sadly still here is the occasional delay when you unlock the device using the top button. It can take as long as 5 seconds until the screen finally responds, and it’s been happening on all Passports, regardless of the OS version.

All apps matter!

To say the BlackBerry 10 app ecosystem is lacking would be an understatement, and that still holds true, despite efforts to bring the Android Runtime as up to date as possible. Sure, you can obtain and install Android apps in more than one way (Snap being the easiest) and run them to varying levels of satisfaction, but as long as emulation is involved, there are and there will always be disadvantages in terms of performance and power consumption, not to mention that many major apps do not work at all (Uber, HERE maps and so on).

There’s an entire school of thought devoted to the idea that BlackBerry owners have everything they could possibly want in terms of functionality and apps, just because they’re a special kind of smartphone users with different requirements. Frankly, I think that argument got old a long time ago.

There’s absolutely no reason to automatically assume that any given person (yes, even BlackBerry users) would never need to catch an Uber or want to try out “kiddie apps” like Instagram. Simplest way to prove this point? Even long-time brand fans that still remember “the good old RIM days” are drifting to app-rich platforms like iOS and Android, not to mention the increasing number of iPhone-brandishing businessmen (really, just look around you).


Conclusion

If you’re going to buy a Passport, then the Silver Edition is definitely the way to go. It’s largely a better version of BlackBerry’s iconic device with no obvious drawbacks in sight. However, it’s nowhere near to the progress that both the smartphone market and faithful BlackBerry users expect and that’s needed to keep the Canadian phone-maker afloat in the long run.

On the whole, just as the unlikely choice of using Android on the BlackBerry Priv, the Silverport doesn’t put CEO John Chen’s strategy for the brand in a good light, at least not when it comes to the devices slice of the company’s business.

Our Rating

looks 5
build 5
speed 4
battery 5
calls 5
camera 4
video 4
apps 2
screen 4
signal5

final rating 4

Photo Gallery (23 Images)

BlackBerry Passport Black/Silver Edition side-by-side comparison
BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - PackagingBlackBerry Passport Silver Edition - Closeup
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