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lackBerry launched the highly anticipated Passport, a large, unconventional square-shaped smartphone that combines its trademark physical keyboard and touch screen designed for corporate users to boost production.

BlackBerry officials said the Passport aimed to rebuild the smartphone maker's relations with the corporate market, which was its core business when the Canadian-based company started in 1984.

'The Passport is purposed-built for productivity-driven mobile business professionals who need a smartphone to get things done [...]' said Marty Beard, BlackBerry chief operating officer, at the launch.

The Passport's, which has a daring hardware design that is odd enough to stand out among the crowd, was launched simultaneously in London, Toronto and Dubai.

John Chen, executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry who has been in charge of turning around the financially troubled company since last November, said, 'The BlackBerry Passport was created to drive productivity and to break through the sea of rectangular-screen, all-touch devices.'

'As we set out to design the Passport, we were guided by a simple yet challenging idea ' to set aside the limitations of traditional design and to instead simply build a device that fundamentally changes the way business professionals get work done on their smartphones.'

The Passport is not your traditional BlackBerry when it comes to design, which was inspired by real passports as a symbol of mobility. It boasts a 11 cm rectangular screen with a 1:1 aspect ratio, 1,440x1,440 pixel HD display for better viewing and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for better strength.

The device is built with the latest technology, including a Quad Core 2.2 GHZ processor and 3 GB RAM. It comes pre-loaded with the new BlackBerry 10.3 operating system with new features such as the BlackBerry Assistant, BlackBerry Blend and Amazon Appstore.

With a non-detachable 3,450 mAh battery claimed to last 30 hours, the Passport is armed with 3GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage space expandable to 64 GB.

Its 13 megapixel optical image stabilization (OIS) rear camera is fitted with an optical image stabilizer, f2.0 lens and 1,080p HD video recording able to shoot 60 frames per second. The 2 megapixel front camera is equipped with 720p HD video recording capability.

The Passport includes the industry's first touch-enabled keyboard with gestures that make typing, editing and navigating more efficient and accurate.

The large screen displays 66 characters of the standard font size each line, almost twice as many as its closest rivals the Samsung Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6, allowing users to easily read spreadsheets, charts and other business information.

The Passport retains BlackBerry's signature QWERTY keyboard layout and but has now incorporated a responsive touch surface, like a trackpad, that allows users to perform touch functions directly on the keyboard.

The physical keyboard doubles as a virtual one. Adding words on screen while typing or moving the cursor around can be performed by swiping the physical keyboard.

Also launched on Wednesday was the BlackBerry Blend, an app that syncs data across computers and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and across operating systems without a virtual private network.

With the Blend, which is available at various virtual stores, you can share files with your friends using Android or IOS, or receive a BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) notification on your desktop running Windows while you are busy in the office, for example.

Another new app is the BlackBerry Assistant, which is BlackBerry's first digital assistant that can be used with voice and text commands to help manage work and personal email, contacts and calendars. Your intelligent assistant responds to you in different ways depending on how you communicate with it. For example, if you speak to your assistant, it will talk back and if you type a message, it will reply through text.

In countries such as Canada, US and the UK, the Passport can be pre-ordered at US$700. In Indonesia, the smartphone will be available by the end of the year and the estimate price is still unknown.