Rumours of official Blackberry handsets running Android gains some legitimacy

Flagging phone and systems provider Blackberry has been rumoured to be working on a handset running Android for some time. While there’s been rumours for a while, they just got a little more legitimate with a pair of tweets from leaker extraordinaire Evan Blass showing what appears to be a render of a Blackberry Passport running Android, as well as talking about another Blackberry slider heading to US carrier AT&T.

The first tweet advises a new slider code-named ‘Venice’ will head to US Carrier AT&T.

https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/616696103535144961

The Venice is apparently going to be a slider (it has a slide-out physical keyboard) with a 5.4″ Quad HD (1440 x 2560) resolution display, and use the a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor with 3GB of RAM, a 5MP front camera, and an 18MP rear camera. There are strong indications that the handset will come with a curved screen, building on rumours that Blackberry and Samsung may partner on a handset.

Next is a bit of a surprise with a pic of a phone that seems to be the Blackberry Passport running Android.
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/616768773249478656

The phone in this pic shows very little other than a physical keyboard, as well as the on-screen Lollipop buttons and what appears to be the Google keyboard.

The Blackberry Passport is a squat looking device which launched here in Australia back in October last year, so it’s running a little long in the tooth spec wise. But if the chasis were used with improved internals, the handset could see new life. The current Blackberry Passport offers a 4.5″ 1:1 aspect ratio, 1440×1440 pixel (453 dpi) HD display with a Qualcomm MSM8974AA Snapdragon 801 processor and 3GB of RAM. The phone has 32GB of storage and a microSD card slot to store your digital life.

With Blackberry making next to no impact in the global smartphone market these days, it’s natural that they would look at seeing if Android can boost their flagging sales.