BlackBerry is rumored to be working on Android-powered devices dubbed Venice and Dallas. Both the devices have landed in India for testing.
Zauba, a website that tracks imports and exports to and from India, has listed both BlackBerry Venice and Dallas to have reached India, which suggests that the upcoming BlackBerry Android devices are up for evaluation.
According to Zauba's listing, two units of BlackBerry Dallas and five units of BlackBerry Venice were shipped to India from Canada on July 4. The price of BlackBerry Dallas is Rs. 24,623 (approx. $388) and Venice is priced at Rs. 63,262 (approx. $997).
The BlackBerry Dallas, which is also known as the BlackBerry Oslo, has already received certification from Indonesia's e-Postel, Malaysia's e-CoM and Singapore's IDA, which are seen as the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The BlackBerry Dallas will have some external design tweaks, but the internal specs are estimated to be the same as the BlackBerry Passport released in September 2014.
If rumors are true, then the BlackBerry Dallas will have a 1,440 x 1,440 IPS LCD display resolution with 453 pixels per inch (ppi). The handset may come running on a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with 3GB RAM.
BlackBerry Venice is expected to have a 5.4-inch quad-FD display with a 2,560 x 1,440 display resolution. Under the hood will be a 64-bit 1.8 GHz hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor and 3GB RAM. The rumored smartphone may include an 18MP primary camera and a 5MP front-facing camera.
Speculations are high the BlackBerry Venice may be an AT&T exclusive handset in the U.S.
The smartphone market is replete with handsets from well-known brands such as Apple, Samsung, HTC, LG and more. The Dallas and Venice will be the first BlackBerry handsets that will come running on the Android platform, which may attract many customers. It remains to be seen if the upcoming BlackBerry handsets are able to capture back some part of BlackBerry's lost market share.
BlackBerry has not yet officially announced the Dallas or Venice.
Photo: Vernon Chan | Flickr
