BlackBerry has been around for quite some time, but the company hasn’t been doing that well financially for quite some time now. BlackBerry was once one of the most respected mobile phone manufacturers in the world, but they’ve failed to adapt to the smartphone era in time. Their BB10 OS is solid, but it came too late it seems, iOS and Android are too far gone. BlackBerry has decided to adapt to the surroundings and release an Android-powered device, the BlackBerry Priv. This smartphone was announced a while back and it’s already available for purchase in certain regions.
That being said, we’ll have a review unit of our own soon enough, so stay tuned for that. Anyhow, bits and pieces of Priv’s software started leaking out recently, including BlackBerry’s keyboard which comes pre-installed on the device. The .apk file has leaked online, and it is now available to download. You’ll be able to download the keyboard if you follow the source link down below. BlackBerry’s keyboard is actually quite interesting, I tried it out on one of my devices, and it works quite well actually, the text prediction is not bad. The keyboard doesn’t have that many options, so keep that in mind.
The layout of BlackBerry Priv’s keyboard is quite clean, and some gestures are here to increase its functionality. You can swipe from right to left in order to delete whole words, and if you swipe down, for example, you’ll be able to toggle numbers and all sorts of symbols. You’ll also notice that various suggestion words pop up above certain letters when you type, well, if you swipe up over the letter where the word is, the keyboard will actually use that word in whatever you’re writing.
BlackBerry keyboard is not the only .apk file from Priv that has leaked, BlackBerry Services, BlackBerry Launcher, BlackBerry Calendar and BlackBerry Hub have also leaked. Now, keep in mind that you’ll need root access for BlackBerry Hub, and BlackBerry Services probably won’t work on your device. The only .apk I’ve managed to tried out thus far is the keyboard one, and it works just fine, but feel free to sideload any of the available applications and let us know what you think.