“In addition to growing hardware revenue, we believe the adoption of Android would allow BlackBerry to significantly reduce costs in its Devices business and lower the breakeven revenue level”. As well as the fact that the BlackBerry Venice aka BlackBerry Priv will be running Android, it has another point of interest because it’s a slider smartphone with a physical slideout keyboard. Now that the name has hit the rumor mill, we are probably closing in on the announcement from BlackBerry that will make this all official. It’s short and snappy, making it just right for its enterprise customers.
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The BlackBerry Priv is expected to run a pretty clean version of Android with some extra apps and a few tweaks. And more importantly, it stands for the privacy-minded focus for all BlackBerry products.
According to Chan, the tech company ought to jettison its BlackBerry 10 operating system, the linchpin of its highly secure ecosystem for mobile phones, in favor of Google’s Android platform.
He also tweeted a new render of the sliding smartphone (below), with a classic QWERTY keyboard hidden underneath the slim screen.
BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB)’s first Android-powered smartphone, the Venice, has been in the news for quite some time now, so we are all familiar with its expected specs and other details.
Now a new set of images have emerged online to show that the phone will be available in several colour options including Blue, White, Purple, red, Grey and Black. The BlackBerry Priv has a slide out keyboard.
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There’s still no word on when BlackBerry plans to unveil the Priv, though considering the current rate of leaks it probably won’t take too long.
