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Vulture takes BlackBerry's Passport through customs

Anything to declare?

Software

The Passport introduces a new version of the QNX/Neutrino-based BB10, a venerable and proven real-time Unix. Out of the limelight, this has been matured nicely in the 20 months since it was launched. It's full of thoughtful and useful features. BlackBerry offers enterprises a strong secure alternative to Android and iOS as well as the richest out-of-the-box email and messaging.

BlackBerry Passport's default icon screens

The Hub message aggregator is an app that never closes and is always accessible with one gesture. For example, "message triage" gives you two quick options after you've checked a message, and you can perform these at any time on multiple items. The BB10 lock screen with subtle notifications is the nicest I've seen, although you can't tap the display or the keyboard to wake the device.

Recent apps are displayed with a simple swipe up. At least this solves the problem of presenting endless lists of apps to the user, as Android does, or an endlessly horizontally scrolling list, as iOS does – but switching could be clearer and simpler by making the app icon bolder and more prominent. From a cold boot the device will remember "ghost" thumbnails of recent apps (see illustration).

I found the Hub's configurable "pinch to filter" useful, and appreciated how the share menu learns from what you do, instead of presenting a long and unsortable list of destinations, many of which you never use, à la Android.

There are one or two rough edges, not least in the Hub. You can't swipe rapidly through messages sequentially in the Hub (although you can use N and P shortcuts, Next and Previous), and doing this invokes the most spectacularly pointless animation. For a productivity device, this is plain weird.

BlackBerry Assistant was just a humble search tool – now it does all kinds of clever things
Here it's showing off instant actions

BB10 has been given a cosmetic makeover with a new fashionable flat 2D look, but it's skin deep: it remains a fairly workmanlike and gimmick-free environment with no support for fancy widgets or look-at-me skins and themes. I don't mind this at all.

BB7 and its successor BB10 featured excellent device-wide search – called Assistant in the latter. It has a unique "instant actions" trick for keyboard users. Type a "verb" such as "sms" or "tweet" and the Passport constructs a little macro on the fly, prompting you for input, then executing it. "SMS Fred are the accounts ready?? and it completes the instruction, opening the Messaging client and only one further click is needed to send the message. To invoke these, you just start typing from the Active Frames pane or the icons panes.

Assistant has now expanded into a fully capable voice assistant, keeping up with Siri, Google Now and Cortana. "Remind me to call Fred in an hour" drops you into a Reminder app, which integrates in turn with Evernote or Exchange, if you use either. I found this much more useful than Cortana, which maintains an invisible Reminder app of its own.

Also supported are intelligent queries ("Read me last Twitter direct message from Fred"), system commands ("Turn off Bluetooth"), local transport and movie databases, and it also integrates with Wolfram Alpha.

Active Frames (left) show most recent tasks and (right) ghost thumbnails on a cold boot

Existing BB10 owners won't get the 10.3 update, but should be updated straight to 10.3.1, which incorporates several welcome features from vintage BlackBerrys, such as profiles and configurable LED alert colours.

Passport introduces a very interesting and potentially useful software called Blend. This complements the wretched Link device manager, which alas has not yet been taken out the back and shot. The Blend client runs on PC, Mac and tablets and BB10 "projects" key functions into a minimalist secure app (around 120MB to download on Macs, and 150MB on PCs).

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