Android fans who still desire a physical keyboard will have something to celebrate later this year, because after many rumors, BlackBerry has confirmed it’s working on an Android phone. It’s called the Priv, and here’s everything we know so far.
Updated on 09-25-2015 by Andy Boxall: Added in official news that the BlackBerry Priv is real, and coming in the near future.It’s real! The BlackBerry Venice becomes the BlackBerry Priv
It’s official: BlackBerry is making an Android smartphone called the BlackBerry Priv, and it’ll be on sale before the end of the year. The confirmation comes after a stream of rumors surrounding the device, and was announced inside the company’s second quarter financial results. Sales of its BlackBerry phones reached just 800,000, a third of that seen a year ago, and overall sales dropped by half at the same time.
CEO John Chen wrote in a statement that the company is “focused on making faster progress to achieve profitability in our handset business,” and this has resulted in the Priv, an Android smartphone. There are no official details about the device’s spec yet, but it will “combine the best of BlackBerry security and productivity with the expansive mobile application ecosystem available on the Android platform,” said Chen.
The Priv will have a slider design, and support both Android for Work and BlackBerry’s BES12 platform, showing the firm is aiming it more towards business and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) users. It’s not abandoning BlackBerry 10, and will release version 10.3.3 in March next year.
We’re told more will be revealed in the coming weeks, and the device will be sold in stores and online before the end of the year.
Rumors started several months ago
A Blackberry phone with a codename of Venice leaked back in June, and was believed to be running Android. It was slated to arrive in November with the following specs: a 5.4-inch Quad-HD screen, a 1.8GHz 64-bit hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB RAM, as well as an 18-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera.
The Venice was shown to have a slide-out physical keyboard, suggesting it was the mysterious slider device CEO John Chen teased at Mobile World Congress. Rumors said the display supposedly has dual-curved edges just like the Galaxy S6 Edge.
In mid-September, Baka Mobile released a hands on video with an alleged BlackBerry Venice evaluation unit. This video reveals a quick launcher to the BlackBerry Hub, Google services, and global searching for both the Web and phone data. The default Web search appears to be Google since the Google Search bar is active on the main screen.
The main interface looks very close to stock Android, but there is no question BlackBerry will add it’s own services into the mix.
We also get a fantastic look at the physical keyboard and the sliding mechanism. The keyboard itself is capacitive, meaning that you will be able to swipe it to scroll content on the main display. It looks really slick.
Content freaks will also be happy to know that a MicroSD slot is onboard as well. Unfortunately, we don’t know how large of card it will accept.
Apparently more than a few people were sporting the BlackBerry Venice at the Toronto Film Festival in mid-September. This isn’t a surprise since the company’s headquarters is only 70 miles away. One fan was able to sneak up behind someone using the said device and capture it on camera.
Although not the greatest photo, it showed the Venice running Android. The app appearing on the display looks awfully similar to Google’s Messenger app. Take a look at the second image below, which shows the Messenger app side-by-side with the phone.
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