BlackBerry Venice Image Leak Shows A Stylish Device With Android OS

BlackBerry is reportedly gearing up to release a slider phone with Android OS, codenamed BlackBerry Venice. A new render of the handset has popped up, courtesy of tipster Evan Blass via Twitter handle @evleaks.

According to Phone Arena, the BlackBerry Venice will be released in November. AT&T will be one of the major carriers to offer this device in the United States. Older leaked images showed the handset running the BlackBerry OS 10. Now, however, a new render of the Venice running the Android Lollipop OS has surfaced.

One main feature of the Venice is its QWERTY keyboard, which has the capability to slide in and out, notes Phone Arena. The new image shows the handset with without the sliding keyboard.

The handset will reportedly come with a curved Quad HD 1,440 x 2,560-pixel display. The device is believed to have a 5.4-inch display and -- like the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge -- will be curved on the right and left sides. In addition, there will be a front-facing speaker, along with a microUSB port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The smartphone will also house two volume buttons on the right-hand side.

The BlackBerry Venice will reportedly be powered by a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 chipset and be backed by a solid 3 GB of RAM configuration, says Phone Arena. BlackBerry has not confirmed the Venice specifications thus far.

John Chen, BlackBerry's chief executive officer, did say the Canadian tech titan will release Android-based handsets if it could make the Android OS "secure enough."