BlackBerry has been in a slumber mode for two years, but now it is back with a major release of a unique phablet called the BlackBerry Passport. Notably, the progress of the BlackBerry Passport was overseen by CEO John Chen and it is an ambitious project.

The BlackBerry Passport was unveiled in multiple events in Dubai, London and Toronto.

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The BlackBerry Passport is a keyboard smartphone with a 4.5-inch display. It is currently on sale and users need to pay $200 for a two-year contract. It will jump to $250 starting Oct. 1. People may also want to buy the BlackBerry Passport without a contract and this will cost them $699. Bell and Rogers customers can pre-order the handset for $249 with contract at Rogers and $299 with a contract at Bell.

The BlackBerry Passport has a 4.5-inch screen with 1440 x 1440 pixels resolution and 453 ppi pixel density. It is powered by a Snapdragon MSM8974 with a quad-core Adreno 330 GPU and 3 GB of RAM. It features a touch-enabled QWERTY keyboard and runs BlackBerry 10.

It offers a 32 GB internal storage with microSD card slot that's expandable by up to 64 GB. It has Wi-Fi, NFC, microUSB v2.0, Bluetooth 4.0 and 4G connectivity. It also has a 3450 mAh non-removable battery.

BlackBerry expects the new phablet to have 30 percent of the mobile market worldwide that's why its pricing strategy is competitive. The BlackBerry Passport costs $599 without a contract. The device is available at ShopBlackBerry (BlackBerry's website).

It can be purchased from AT&T for $250 with contract in the U.S. while it costs CAD 699 in Canada, EUR 649 in France and German and GBP 529 in the UK.

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