Photos of BlackBerry's Android-powered 'Venice' phone leak online
The Vietnamese language site Techrum (Google Translate link) recently published images of what it claims are images of BlackBerry’s Venice phone, complete with slide out keyboard. Another Vietnamese-language site, Tinhte (Google Translate link), which has a pretty good track record with rumors, also published what appears to be the same batch of photos as Techrum.
The new images are in line with previous leaks, especially the leaked render that Evleaks shared on Twitter in early July and then again in mid-August. The phone is suspected to be based on the slider device that BlackBerry showed off during Mobile World Congress in March.
The latest scuttlebutt says the phone will rock a 5.4-inch display with 2560-by-1440 resolution, a 1.8Ghz Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, an 18 megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 5MP camera in the front. Evleaks expects the phone to show up in the fall around November on all four major U.S. carriers.
The story behind the story: Interest in the BlackBerry platform has been lagging for some time; however, the company’s Android experiment isn’t necessarily about joining the ranks of HTC, LG, and Samsung. Instead, Reuters reported in June that BlackBerry wants to show how its enterprise servers can work with competing mobile devices. The “AndroidBerry” would also come with the the company’s forthcoming BlackBerry Experience Suite a collection of BlackBerry apps for non-BlackBerry mobile devices that is part of the company’s cross-platform strategy.
[via CrackBerry]