Noted internet tipster Evan Blass has revealed two details about BlackBerry's upcoming smartphone plans, and the focus on increased Android support.
The first is the news that the BlackBerry Venice handset will be powered by Android, and one of the slider keyboard based handset will be sold by AT&T later in the year. That Venice will be Android-powered matches previous rumors, but the news of AT&T's adoption of the Venice makes sense. AT&T has a long associated with BlackBerry, and has already taken a number of the new BB10 powered handsets and requested tweaked designed for its customer base.
Blass went on to reveal a new rendering that echoes the current BlackBerry Passport in size and style. The point of interest here is the extra 'soft' keys above the three rows of physical qwerty keys. These echo the look of the Android Lollipop interface. While it's possible that the next generation BlackBerry Passport will run full-blown Android, it is more likely an update of the Android Runtime that ships as part of the BB10 OS. Currently the runtime is equivalent to Android 4.4. An update to provide compatibility with 5.0 Lollipop would increase the number of modern apps that all BlackBerry handsets would be able to run.
This would be an utterly sensible and expected move.
But there's one more wrinkle in this story, and that's a splash screen posted online that shows Google's Android Runtime prominently displayed on the boot screen of BB10 10.3.3.
There would be nothing stopping a splash screen being photoshopped, but the intriguing possibility of BlackBerry licensing the full Google Android toolbox from Mountain View does make some long-term commercial sense. It would provide BlackBerry access to the full library of Android apps on the Play Store, it would mean that any fully-Android powered handset would come with all the expected Android apps a consumer would be looking for alongside BlackBerry's additions, and key for me would be the reduction in software R&D costs that BlackBerry would run up in the future to maintain its own platform.
A move to embrace Google's flavor of Android in any form would weaken the unique offering of BlackBerry. CEO John Chen and his team would be relying on hardware design and marketing to promote the handsets to a niche audience. But it should offer monetary savings and increase the desirability of the solution offered to consumers.
(Now read about a potential partnership between Samsung and BlackBerry).
