InformationWeek's Geekend: BlackBerry Bets on Being Square

In a week of square and bendable smartphones from BlackBerry and Apple, Geekend author David Wagner is thinking about the shapes of things.

Sep 26, 2014

NEW YORK, Sept. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Since the start of September, the world has been overwhelmed by smartphones, with new offerings from the likes of Apple and, most recently, BlackBerry, which just released a new square device called the Passport.

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With all these smartphones, InformationWeek Geekend author David Wagner has been thinking about shapes, specifically how far phone makers can go to make their devices unique.

In the case of the BlackBerry Passport, Wagner imagines company engineers giving up on the fun aspects of design and solely focusing on boring business tasks. In this week's Geekend, Wagner observes, "But what strikes me instantly is that Blackberry has simply given up on the idea that their phones would ever be used for fun. If they thought you'd ever do something like watch a movie or even a YouTube video on it, they'd never give you a square screen. Not putting the screen in the HD standard aspect ratio of 16:9 is absolutely analog. Actually it is worse than analog because that's at least 4:3."

After the BlackBerry Passport, Wagner turns his attention to the new iPhone 6, which appears to have the ability to bend into a boomerang. Does this mean the next-generation of smartphones will come in trapezoid? How about round? What about a triangle, and where would the buttons go?

Each week, Wagner takes an often humorous look at a variety of science and technology news to see how we're changing our world, and how the world we built is changing us. In this week's installment, he's bending smartphones to their limits. Check it out here.

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