[mgmueller]

I really like it and have replaced my iPhone.
I never liked my iPhone for business tasks and now I've been able to solve lots (75%?) of my problems.
Just a few examples:

It's the little details:

You can use profiles.
The easiest and most convenient one:
I've scheduled a meeting. In that time, no ring tones, only flashes of the LED.

You type on the 3 physical rows of the keyboard.
You get excellent predictions in the 4th row at the bottom of the screen.
1 of those 3 predictions after 3 or 4 letters usually is the right one.
It automatically switches between my predefined languages. On iPhone, when typing German mails, I often forgot to switch from English to German and got absurd predictions. I always thought "hey, that's a well known term in German. Is it so hard to recognize that I'm not writing English at the moment?". Obviously, it's not hard, BlackBerry is doing this surprisingly well.
And now the trick and huge time saver: You don't click the word, you "flick" it. Just leave your finger on the keyboard, put it in the area of the right word (left, middle, right) somewhere on the physical keyboard. Now flick the word up to the text. This takes half a dozen tries at the first time, but then you've got it. Basically, I start in the middle row of the keyboard and flick a few millimeters into the display. Working great!

When turning it on, the LED for a second flashes red. Sounds trivial. But on many of my devices, I'm never sure, whether I actually turned it on and whether it's booting. Then, after 20 seconds, nothing happens and I switch on again. On BlackBerry Passport, you're 100% sure right after turning it on.

Reception, speech quality and battery duration are outstanding.

It's perfect for my (business) needs.
But it certainly won't be an iPhone killer. Not even close.
In the BlackBerry App store, I find maybe 25% of the apps I have on my iPhone.
In the pre-installed Amazon App Store, I find maybe another 25% of the apps I have on my iPhone.
I definitely don't need all of those apps on iPhone, lots are mere gadgets.
But the gap is huge and will be even bigger for gadgeteers.
I've installed Snap. It's kind of an interface to Google Play. I can login to my Google account and find all my apps I own in the Google Play store. But: They aren't optimized at all for the square screen of BlackBerry Passport and they are native Android apps.

So this means:

95% of the apps from the BlackBerry App Store work flawlessly. Surprisingly enough, a few did not. One map application for example states "no internet connection". So obviously, it's not an exclusive Passport store, but for all BlackBerry 10 devices. No biggy, I have a handful of apps behaving strangely on iPhone as well.

Maybe 80% of the apps from the Amazon App Store work, vast majority of those flawlessly. But of course it's Android Apps and from time to time something doesn't work for the square screen or whatever might be the reason.

With the apps from Google Play via Snap, it's "hit and miss". My hitrate of working apps probably is below 50%. It helps a lot and it's nice not having to pay again for apps I already own.

Personally, I can close the app gap well enough. But lots of gadgeteers claim "I can't live without Pocket or this and that app" and then it would be a frustrating experience.

So I'm coming to the old conclusion:
For restaurants, success is 90% about location.
For tablets and smartphones, success is 90% about apps.
For my business needs, it's working well. But for the majority of smartphone users, it probably won't be an alternative. Not to iOS and Android, but probably not even to Windows Mobile.

EDIT:
BlackBerry Passport really is one on the best tools (I don't want to call it a gadget, although it's great in that regard as well) I've bought in years.
I still discover some new details every day.
Example:
I love the LED. The most efficient way, to get informed about a waiting email or missed call.
I thought about buying a 3rd party app, that allows for configuring the LEDs.
For example per account or contact.
The LED has (at least) 4 colors: Blue, red, green and white.
I'm using blue for my corporate account, red for some special contacts and so on.
The 3rd party app even allows for combinations for example red-green-red-blue.
I didn't buy this app, because I don't want to have too many 3rd party apps running as background tasks.
But I thought about this app again and again.
And now the newest firmware adds this feature directly from BlackBerry.
I can't combine the LED colors, but everything else is there.
So simple - but so helpful!