Passport to the good ol' days

JOHN Chen's smartphone is a bit like him - it stands out from the crowd. The BlackBerry CEO carries the latest flagship phone from his company called, interestingly, the Passport. In a sea of rectangular screen-only candy bar-shaped smartphones, the Passport is an almost square phone (actually it's shaped like a passport and hence the name) with a physical keyboard. You look at it and wonder: "Gee, who's going to use this?"

But once it's in your hands, it begins to make sense and you may even start to like it. It's early days yet but BlackBerry may be finally onto a winner with this phone.

The Canadian company - a smartphone operating system (OS) and devices pioneer - has been pushed to the sidelines by Apple's iPhone and devices running Google's Android OS. BlackBerry has been reduced to a bit player in the fast growing and highly lucrative market.