The BlackBerry Passport has gone up for pre-order in a white version on the company's Canadian e-store, sporting a CAD$699 price tag (about $622.22).
At the same time, a red model of the smartphone has leaked online again over the weekend, but the company has yet to announce details regarding the availability of a red BlackBerry Passport.
BlackBerry has been struggling in recent years to stay relevant in an increasingly-competitive smartphone market, after losing significant ground to rivals. The BlackBerry Passport is the company's latest effort to turn things around, and comes as an intriguing smartphone with a square-ish design and a focus on productivity.
The pre-order page for the white BlackBerry Passport indicates that this version will start shipping to interested customers in Canada early next month, on Dec. 7. Other than the new paint job, the BlackBerry Passport remains unchanged in terms of specifications compared to the original model that came in black.
A red version of the handset, meanwhile, remains unconfirmed at this point, but persistent leaks indicate that it's about to make an imminent debut. Just a couple of weeks ago, BlackBerry CEO John Chen was spotted with a red BlackBerry Passport the company's BlackBerry for Enterprise event.
Some new renders of the red BlackBerry Passport have now surfaced on Twitter from a user named @Kyle27_, as spotted by CrackBerry. The BlackBerry-centric publication suggests that this version of the smartphone might become available for purchase later this week, on Black Friday.
As a reminder, the BlackBerry Passport is the first handset to rock the company's new BlackBerry 10.3 OS, which adds notable features such as a new BlackBerry Hub with Instant Access, as well as the BlackBerry Assistant. Moreover, with BlackBerry 10.3 users can also access the Amazon Appstore for Android.
The handset made its debut back in September, sporting a 4.5-inch IPS LCD display with an odd resolution of 1440 x 1440 pixels. Under the hood, the smartphone packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.2GHz, paired with Adreno 330 graphics and 3GB of RAM. Other specs include a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and BSI sensor, a 2-megapixel front shooter, a 3,450 mAh battery, and an intriguing three-line physical keyboard with a capacitive touch surface.
The BlackBerry Passport has stirred quite some interest since its debut, and more color options should boost the handset's popularity. We'll keep you up to date as soon as more details surface regarding the red model, but for now Canadian customers can pre-order the white version.
