The upcoming BlackBerry Venice is apparently headed to all four major U.S. carriers in November, rocking a sliding keyboard and Android on the software side.
BlackBerry may have fallen behind rivals in recent years, but the company is not willing to give up the fight just yet. Once at the top of the food chain, BlackBerry has been having some trouble keeping its head above the water and it seems that it's now considering a different approach with its upcoming BlackBerry Venice.
Instead of BlackBerry OS, the intriguing BlackBerry Venice will apparently run Google's popular Android operating system, and potentially some Microsoft apps as well, such as Skype and Bing pre-installed out of the box.
The BlackBerry Venice has starred in a number of leaks and reports so far, and more information now comes to light courtesy of trusted tipster @EvLeaks. In addition to showing the purported BlackBerry Venice in a few more images, the tipster also reveals that the smartphone has a November release timeframe on all four major U.S. carriers - AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile.
In the newly-leaked set of images, @EvLeaks shows the purported BlackBerry Venice with Google services on board, complete with the PlayStore for Android Lollipop. The smartphone will further boast a BlackBerry data transfer user interface, as well as a mail client and Chromecast support.
A subsequent image from the same tipster, meanwhile, reveals the sliding physical keyboard of the upcoming BlackBerry Venice. The smartphone will sport an on-screen keyboard as well, but the sliding physical keyboard could be more useful for documents, long messages or emails and the likes.
When it comes to specifications, leaks and reports so far have indicated that the BlackBerry Venice will feature a 5.4-inch capacitive touchscreen with a QHD resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, an 18-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization (OIS), auto focus and LED flash, and a 5-megapixel front camera.
BlackBerry has yet to make an official announcement, however, so it all remains in the rumor state at this point. Nevertheless, if @EvLeaks turns out to be accurate and the BlackBerry Venice is indeed set to hit Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in November, more information should come to light soon enough.
