At first glance, the most unusual thing about the BlackBerry Priv smartphone is hardware-related: it’s one of the only high-end Android smartphones with a physical keyboard. But a lot of what makes BlackBerry’s first Android phone special is also software-related.

The company ships the phone with Google’s smartphone operating system, but BlackBerry also includes a suite of communication, security, and productivity apps. While that software is designed specifically for BlackBerry phones, it turns out some of the apps can run on other Android phones.

priv_02

Members of the xda-developers forum have started playing with the apps that come pre-installed on the Priv, and here’s what they’ve found so far:

  • The BlackBerry keyboard app can be installed on phones running Android 5.0 or later.
  • So can the BlackBerry Launcher apps, but you’ll need to install BlackBerry Services as well.
  • There’s a patched version of BlackBerry Calendar app also works.

Keep in mind that there’s no official support for running these apps on non-BlackBerry phones, but if you’ve been intrigued by things like the “pop-up widgets” feature for the BlackBerry Launcher, now you can give them a try without buying a new phone.

Pop-up widgets, by the way, allow you to swipe up on an icon on the home screen to bring up a widget for weather, music, news, or other apps. This lets you essentially get the benefits of home screen widgets without cluttering your screen.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,543 other subscribers

4 replies on “Some BlackBerry Priv apps can run on other Android phones (keyboard, calendar, launcher)”

  1. Only the Blackberry Priv gives you security on an Android OS though and the Blackberry HUB is amazing.

    1. The Action Launcher comes with Shutters which is literally the same as BB’s Pop-up widgets

Comments are closed.