Tired of looking at rendered images of the upcoming BlackBerry smartphone with a slide-out keyboard and Android operating system. Well, now you can look at some actual photos of the phone that’s allegedly code-named “Venice,” thanks to Vietnamese site Tinhte.

venice_03

While it’s possible we’re looking at a clone rather than an actual product, Tinhte forum members have a pretty good track record with finding devices before they’re generally available to the public (or even announced).

As expected, the BlackBerry Venice seems to have a QWERTY keyboard that hides behind the phone when it’s not in use, and slides down when you want to type with a physical keyboard.

While some earlier sliders had landscape-style keyboards, the Venice has a keyboard that can only be used in portrait mode… which makes sense since this is a BlackBerry device, and BlackBerry has a long track record of producing phones with keyboards that can be used in portrait orientation.

The photos clearly show that the phone is running Android Lollipop software and features a 16MP rear camera with Optical Image stabilization. That’s all in keeping with previous leaks related to this phone, which may be officially launched sometime around November.

via 9to5Google

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8 replies on “BlackBerry Venice Android phone spotted in the wild”

  1. Blackberry should have stuck with BBOS instead of trying to follow ios and android with bb10. Android isnt gonna save Blackberry.

  3. Not sure I’d want a a Blackberry with Android. The whole point of them was they were a lot more secure than other phones and because it was a microkernal OS didn’t crumple up in a big pool of goo every time anything went wrong.

  4. I really feel that had Blackberry hitched on with Android back in 2010, they’d be to enterprise for Android what Samsung is to the consumer Android market right now. Fortunately, it’s not too late (since nobody has been able to crack enterprise for Android), and Blackberry may still have a chance due to their name and reputation in enterprise.

  5. I wonder if the sliding up will be as satisfying as it was on the old Palm Pre’s… I miss that phone.

    1. Or even better, that awesome dual-springed ball bearing slider mechanism in the stainless steel Nokia 8800.

  7. Ooh! Now here’s hoping the specs are decent, at least in comparison to my Oneplus One 😛 I’d love to go back to a physical keyboard without losing screen size!

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