We’ve been hearing rumors of BlackBerry possibly going with Android for their next smartphone. We’ve heard that there are actually a couple Android running BlackBerries coming out, with one that leaked out yesterday, that turned out to be a Passport running Android. Now we have another picture coming from Evan Blass aka Evleaks, of the BlackBerry Venice, which you can see above.
The device actually looks really nice in our opinion, while we aren’t the biggest BlackBerry fans – obviously since we all use Android here – it’s definitely a looker. The BlackBerry Venice first surfaced in a report out of Reuters last month, and we’ve seen it surface a few times since. Blackberry’s CEO, John Chen spoke with Bloomberg not too long ago, basically saying never say never when it comes to Android on BlackBerry. And that he wanted to create a secure Android. Right now that’s Android’s biggest downfall. The enterprise market. BlackBerry had a huge market there, and the majority of them jumped ship to iOS, leaving Android out. Although Google has tried to win them back with Android @ Work, which is a nice concept and product, but enterprise customers only switch devices once every 5 years or more. So that’s going to take some time.
From what we can see in this image, it appears that the device is running a stock version of Android Lollipop. Of course, all we can see is the home screen, so that’s all we can go by right now. With a micro USB port and 3.5mm head phone jack at the bottom. Interesting that there is no USB Type-C port there. As far as the apps on the home screen there, we can’t say for sure that those will all be pre-installed just yet, but you can bet that BBM will definitely be pre-installed along with all of Google’s apps. What we can also see on the home screen is that there appears to be shortcuts to be able to call and text contacts quickly from the home screen. That’s a nice touch, to be honest. Hopefully we’ll learn more about the BlackBerry Venice in the near future, and hopefully it won’t be a carrier exclusive.