BlackBerry plans to launch Passport smartphone on September 24

Smartphone maker BlackBerry plans to host a media event on September 24 to launch Passport, its latest device the company hopes will compete with the Apple iPhone and Google Android smartphones. Events will be held in London, Toronto and Dubai - and consumers have known about the smartphone's launch for several months now.

The Passport features a 4.5-inch LCD square screen providing 1440 x 1440 resolution, and features a QWERTY keyboard. The phone uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.2GHz processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, and an Adreno 330 GPU.

"In September, we will host an event to showcase our device portfolio for the [fiscal year 2015]," said John Chen, BlackBerry CEO, during a June earnings call. "We're launching a brand-new device called Passport in September in London. Most of the information has been leaked to websites, so you guys should go ahead and check that out. This will follow by the Classic coming out in November."

As a longtime BlackBerry smartphone owner turned Android fan, I think it's good to see the company continue to push out smartphones - but there seems to be little hope the company will be able to compete with Apple, Android, Samsung, and other smartphone manufacturers.