BlackBerry continues to sing the praises of its as-yet-unreleased Passport smartphone. The device has been getting a lot of press for its unique design and BlackBerry doesn’t want you to miss the fact that people are talking about its brave attempt to produce a game-changing phone. The latest bout of chest-thumping switches things up a bit, focusing not on the hardware but the software. This comes via the official Inside BlackBerry blog, which today introduced us to the BlackBerry Assistant app, BlackBerry’s answer to Google Now and Apple’s Siri.
BlackBerry Assistant is part of BlackBerry 10.3 and features that all-important support for voice activation. BlackBerry’s Donny Halliwell writes that BlackBerry Assistant can search email and calendar, find out what’s trending on Twitter, read emails, find song lyrics, set reminders, tweet, switch on the flashlight, send out invitations to events (or meetings, presumably), help you compose messages, and more. Apparently, the majority of tasks are executed without even switching away from the Assistant app.
Over time, BlackBerry Assistant adapts to you and Halliwell says those that have used “other smartphone-based personal assistants” will be surprised at BlackBerry Assistant’s accuracy. There’s also easter eggs hidden away in there, because why not?
BlackBerry’s Passport was announced less than a month ago and has been almost a fixed feature on the BlackBerry blog since then. The company declared “it’s hip to be square” just last week, and waxed lyrical about the device’s keyboard a couple of days later. On Monday, the company blogged about all the news stories talking discussing the phone. The Passport’s September launch has never seemed so far away.
[source]BlackBerry[/source]
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