The BlackBerry Passport screen is bigger than it looks

The BlackBerry Passport is due to be released this September, and the phone’s 4.5 inch screen is much bigger than it first appears to be. Mainly this is due to the fact that the Passport will have a square screen as opposed to the 16:9 ratio that dominates the industry. The tradition of measuring screen sizes based on the diagonal favors widescreen formats (and may be part of the reason that BlackBerry and Apple both moved their phones from 4:3 screen ratios to their current 16:9 ratios). Measuring instead by area, the screen of the BlackBerry Passport is equivalent to a 4.9 inch widescreen phone.

passport

The table below compares the Passport to other BlackBerry phones, giving the area in square inches and then a comparison to the size of the Passport.

PhoneArea
Passport10.11100%
Z3010.68106%
Z107.7877%
Q104.7947%
Bold 99003.7637%
Torch 98004.9249%