For a few months now there have been rumours that BlackBerry will launch a phone running Android. The handset, currently known as the BlackBerry Venice, is expected to be a high-end slider, giving Android users a style of handset that’s rarely seen any more and giving BlackBerry a new choice of OS.
While the BlackBerry Venice is likely to launch sometime this year it’s not yet been confirmed and the fact that it’s supposedly running Android is enough to question it, as BlackBerry has never released an Android phone before.
But it certainly looks like the company is testing Android out, as in a new video from Dudu Rocha Tec you can see Android Lollipop installed on a BlackBerry Passport.
The video isn’t in English, but it’s clearly Android on the handset and it appears to run fine. Of course this may have been faked, but it certainly looks real and if BlackBerry has got Android working on the Passport it suddenly seems a lot more feasible that it could release an Android handset.
Already the company offers the Amazon App Store on phones so that users can access Amazon apps, but to ditch BlackBerry 10 altogether, even if only for one handset, is quite a big move. Hopefully it happens and it translates into the sales BlackBerry is so in need of.
The BlackBerry Venice is unlikely to worry the Samsung Galaxy S6, but it might well be able to carve out its own niche, as it’s rare that we see Android phones with real QWERTY keyboards, so it certainly has that working in its favour.
