Blackberry has just released its new smartphone design and it actually breaks the mould by being square. While the rest of the word fights over who invented the rounded rectangle Steve Jobs or some Ancient Greek, Blackberry have actually come up with something original.

The square-screened BlackBerry Passport said that being there by being square is a "great ergonomic design that drives content, media consumption and quick communications." 

In fact it thinks that the rounded rectangle shape might be limiting innovations on smartphones. 

The Passport has a 4.5-inch, 1440×1440 display which Blackberry says is "like the IMAX of productivity" and can display more information from spreadsheets or webpages or e-books without as much scrolling or flipping between portrait and landscape modes. Like the BlackBerry Q10, it uses a physical keyboard augmented by some onscreen keys.

Those who have played with it say that the Passport may well be preferable for spreadsheets and word processing, but the square screen will be much less useful for widescreen movies, and its wide, blocky design will entirely prohibit one-handed use.

We are expecting to see it in the shops later this year, and it will launch with BlackBerry 10.3. Though BlackBerry is still losing money and its presence in the modern smartphone market is negligible it seems to have hit the bottom and is ready to start moving.