BlackBerry tried quite hard to keep their operating system relevant, but many experts agreed that it was too little, too late. As other companies moved on and adopted the new design philosophy that the iPhone brought about, BlackBerry tried to stick to their old model and ultimately failed as they found themselves forced to follow the leaders. But by the time they implemented their own full-touch operating system and released new flagship devices for it, there was little interest left in their business.
While the Z10 and Q10 were moderate successes on the market, they were nowhere near the popularity enjoyed by the company’s previous phones during the BB7 era. One of the main issues was reportedly the poor state of the app ecosystem, and there were very few apps for people to play around with.
The company tried to implement an Android emulator that could handle APK files almost natively, allowing their users to use Android apps on their BlackBerry devices, but that still didn’t help much. In the end, the popularity of BlackBerry 10 went lower and lower, until the company found itself stuck in irrelevance.
Now they seem to be planning an interesting new move, releasing an Android phone under their own branding. We haven’t seen much official information about the phone yet, but we do know that it’s called Venice, and will feature a slide-out keyboard design – but also a good touch experience, from what we can tell.
The phone might arrive sooner than anticipated, as BlackBerry are apparently preparing it for a 2015 launch. More specifically, they are aiming for the month of November, but we don’t know if that’s a confirmed rumor or if they really are planning a release around that time. It would at least make sense with regards to their other releases, but we don’t know if it’s a good idea to bring out a phone to the market at the same time as so many other companies (which is what we expect to happen around October/November).
It will come with several interesting features, and it’s rumored to come with Android as its operating system instead of sticking to BlackBerry OS. Other than that, it might have borrowed some ideas from the designs of Samsung, such as the addition of a curved screen with edges on the display. We don’t know if those edges will actually have any touch functionality like the characteristic phones released by Samsung though, and there haven’t been any news about that.
BlackBerry are known for some creative ideas in the mobile market, even today despite their fall into obscurity. They pioneered some features that ended up becoming common in handsets across the market, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they have some even more interesting features planned for the Venice that we aren’t hearing about yet.
One of the central features in the new device is going to be the slide-out keyboard. It looks like BlackBerry at least know what people appreciated in their devices the most and are going to play to that desire as much as possible.
The original devices were highly popular thanks to their high-quality physical keyboards and the smooth typing experience that they offered. So much that some people were disappointed to see the first flagship by the company with their new operating system lacking a physical keyboard. But in the end, they managed to rectify the situation by offering a significantly improved touchscreen experience at least. And combined with the overall good features of BlackBerry 10 as an operating system, it was not a bad phone in general.