Check out these leaked images of BlackBerry’s Android-powered Venice smartphone

Thomas McMullan Read more September 2, 2015

Photos of BlackBerry’s long-rumoured Android-running smartphone, going by the name Venice, have hit the internet.

Check out these leaked images of BlackBerry’s Android-powered Venice smartphone

Pictures of the alleged phone, leaked by Taiwanese site

Tinhte, may be short on gondolas and plazas full of tourists brandishing selfie-sticks, but Venice does have a slide-out keyboard and looks to be running a version of Android Lollipop. BlackBerry Venice Android screen

The photos show the alleged Venice device from a variety of angles, including a touchscreen with Android in action and clear shots of a sliding Qwerty keyboard that emerges when the back of the device is pushed downwards.

Tinhte’s photos go on to show that the phone has SIM card and microSD card slots at the top, a speaker grille along the bottom edge, and power and volume rocker keys on the right edge.

The picture of the phone’s back shows an 18-megapixel camera with optical image stabilisation and dualLED flash, along with a textured pattern on the rear panel.

Previous rumours about the BlackBerry Venice have said that the phone will feature a 5.4in QHD display, 1.8GHz hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor with 3GB of RAM, 3,000mAh battery and 5-megapixel front camera.

BlackBerry’s foray into Android is widely seen as an attempt to re-energise interest in the BlackBerry platform, which now has a smartphone market share of less than 1%.

As well as catching a share of the touchscreen Android market, Reuters reported in June that the rumoured partnership with Google is part of BlackBerry’s strategy to shift the focus to software and device management, and that the slider device is part of the plan to boost confidence in the company’s enterprise device management system, BES12.