BlackBerry is betting big on its upcoming Android smart phone that’s called the PRIV. With user privacy being its key focus, the new slider device is dubbed the World’s first Blackberry secure smart phone powered by Android. With full access to Google Play Store apps, the Blackberry PRIV should be more appealing to the masses than its current BlackBerry 10 based smart phones.
To give a better idea of this BlackBerry + Android combo, the Waterloo company has just released its first PRIV video starring its very own Blackberry Hub.
Being a slider device, it gives the best of both worlds featuring a full touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard which also doubles up as a trackpad, like the BlackBerry Passport. In terms of specs, it gets a 5.4″ dual curved Quad HD display with a Snapdragon 808 processor mated to 3GB RAM under the hood. For photography, it carries an 18MP main camera that’s Schneider-Kreuznach certified and the front carries a 5MP shooter. The battery is officially listed as a 3,410mAh capacity unit which should provide more than a day’s worth of usage.
The BlackBerry PRIV is expected to be available in November and they had also started a registration of interest drive on their website. From the video, it looks very stock Android with a couple of BlackBerry services integrated right in. For those already using Android, you should feel right at home. Meanwhile BlackBerry 10 OS users might take a while to get acquainted, as demonstrated by their CEO.
For those who are concerned about security, the PRIV could be your next Android smart phone. If you’re using a BlackBerry 10 device, would you make the switch to an Android based BlackBerry?
