BlackBerry has revealed that its forthcoming smartphone will avoid the familiar rectangular shape used by most companies and will be more square shaped instead. In a market where shops are full of externally very similar rectangular slabs with a touchscreen, the square shaped device could stand out and give the company at least a nominal sales opportunity.

The forthcoming BlackBerry Passport will retain the familiar QWERTY keyboard, but comes with a much wider screen compared to other phones. That should make reading emails somewhat easier as the text will be able to flow more conventionally and appear similar to the desktop version.

Academic research has shown that the optimal number of characters on a line in a book is 66 characters. While most current rectangular smartphones show approx. 40 characters; the BlackBerry Passport will show the recommended 60 characters.

The company also revealed a number of changes to the keyboard functionality which it says makes typing a lot faster for the users.