FINALLY! Blackberry Rumored to Release 'Venice' - a slider QWERTY large screen touch-screen smartphone in Novermber

Gosh all my Christmasses and Birthdays are arriving on one week. First Elop is fired. Then Trump joins the Clown Circus to give the funniest election season ever. Then Nokia confirms it returns to smartphones next year. Now comes the rumor of 'Venice' the Blackberry Slider, apparently scheduled for November release. Wow this is awesome news (what is next for this astonishing week, will Kimi win in Austria?)

So Blackberry Venice. Its a rumor but Ubergizmo reports today that the device was shown as prototype to carriers and has a launch date of November. Want the specs? Drool over this: 5.4 inch touch-screen with Quad HD resolution. Very nice. Camera? 18mp on back, 5mp for selfies? This too is best-ever for the BeeBee. What about that keyboard. Yes, finally yes, a SLIDER QWERTY. This is the phone I have to have and will go buy immediately it is out. Cool beans, thank you gods of mobile, thank you all at Waterloo, I take back every nasty thing I've written about you in recent years. This is a killer smartphone for Christmas 2015. I miss the keyboard of my old BB Bold, this is a must-have smartphone for anyone who longs for a physical keyboard in a modern phone with also large screen (and good camera).

Now about those Android rumors, I would not expect this to be an Android device (yet) and that will not be a deal-breaker, for most who want this, they will already have an Android or iPhone in the other pocket.

Please please pretty please Blackberry, don't now mess it up. Please do include the microSD slot and removable battery, ok? Don't now fumble the obvious stuff. And do release this everywhere. Good luck Blackberry. I am confident this will be a beloved BeeBee and will get you a good Christmas season 2015.

Comments

[Crun Kykd]

Hmmm, Nokia planning return to smartphones in 2016. Elop out at Microsoft. Maybe they're putting the old gang back together again? Burning platform here we come!

[Snowman]

Keyword-phones are for geeks and for those folks had not been anything since the Nokia N900 (continued in the Neo900 project) and Jolla with their geekiest Jolla-phone with the #TOHKBD (a smart-cover I2C-bus physically attachable QWERTY(Z)-keyboard made by the Jolla-open-source community). I got mine just a coupled of days ago. I hate those only touch-phones and I constantly make mistakes even with prediction-corrections... Android is too mainstream so a no-go for me as a geek too. And yeah we had the Snowden revealings... and so the non-Google/non-Apple partition of the world is growing! I would buy a Blackberry-QWERTY just for curiosity if it would be somehow possible to purchase from Europe. I guess at Amazon/EBay, let's hope it's arriving as a Christmas-present. I'm happy to see a contender for the need of keyboard-people. And did I mention that it's a lot of fun to play Qake on a keyboard phone like the glorious never sold more than 5000 pieces, the Nokia N950 which is as slim as an iPhone 4 but has a slider-QWERTY! Cheers to the departure of Mr. S. Elop & thanks for bringing us Jolla! #BurningPlatformMemo

[Snowman]

...sorry even my first word is a typo! So yeah I ment *KEYBOARD-PHONES* and I badly need it :) Currently I don't have the Jolla-TOHKBD attached :-/ Good luck Nokia even though they stated to not entered anymore the phone arena. I wonder where Tomi had heard about it...!!!???

[Robert Marchi]

doncha think this too little too late. They will still have to get people to develop apps for it.

[John]

As far as its OS will not be android is dead on arrival no matter what.

[Snowman]

What about SailfishOS for Blackberry's? Many Blackberry-apps had been made by open-source community so far anyway. This would be an option to differentiate out of Androidism. At least there could be a real multitasking OS with native apps from open-source and Android-support. If anyone wants, he or she just can install Google-Play-Store or any of the free-of-registering-Android download-places... . All necessary there for business-people and they could then laugh about the ones with just iPhones :D

[Spawn]

> And do release this everywhere

And enable people to SELL it off-contract! Not be as stupid to AGAIN to bundle it exclusive with contracts.

p.s. BB10 runs Android apps.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Thanks guys.

I think the Passport was the dumbest form factor ever for a phone. The uncomfortably wide device that doesn't fit pockets (as a business phone) nor hands for single-handed operation comfortably, but still, with phablet-size width, it had no screen width with that idiotic square screen. As we all can easily flip the phone in our hand from portrait-orientation to landscape-orientation, a 16x9 screen format is far far better on any smartphone optimizing maximum screen and minimum handset width.

But while for all phones screen size trumps everything as I wrote here on the blog, for Blackberry the loyalty is physical keyboard. How to make that paradox work. Obviously with a slider (or folder but slider allows the full touch-screen to be seen where folder hides it). Its like a convertible-top car. If you want a roof, get the top up, if you want to drive out in the open on a nice sunny day, lower the roof down and have an open car. A convertible. The Venice is a 'convertible' Blackberry which gives us both that specifically Blackberry loyal users want and all phone users want, a physical keyboard AND a large touch-screen. I do like it that his is really 'going Bold' also with the other specs for a true flagship-class phone such as very high spec camera etc.

It won't be the bestselling phone in the world. It will, however, be highly beloved by loyal Blackberry users and recent Blackberry users who hark back. And it will find plenty of Nokia E-Series users coming to it. So I am quite confident this will give Blackberry a good Christmas sales season - but also remember, the Blackberry reporting season ends 'one month early' so their reporting quarter is September-to-November not October-to-December. That means the majority of the Venice sales surge will hit the 'first quarter' of 2016 ie December-February reporting quarter but I expect a good initial surge already at the end of November.

As I said, I'm buying one just on Blackberry's reputation and these specs. I loved my old Bold and my current physical keyboard smartphone (Nokia E7) is literally on its last legs Every day I flip it open, I fear this is the day the device bricks itself.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Brady]

Happy texting Tomi....so happy BB is coming out with a modern ancient design for you. I'm sure you'll be thrilled.

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

The Passport isn't that bad and the size fits a in a jacket or suit without any problems. The form factor of the Passport is excellent for reading web pages while I think 16:9 is too short (in landscape mode) for that small screen.

Sailfish for Blackberry? Simply put, BB10 is the absolute best operating system out there apart from the lack of apps. Out of the box it is the most capable of them all. I would rather say that the Android capability hurt their own ecosystem in the beginning.

It's really sad that Blackberry isn't selling better that's much because of intentionally bad press to favor US operating systems.

[bjarneh]

Although I hope BlackBerry makes it, with their distribution, how can they?

Here in Norway you cannot buy these devices anywhere, not even online (on Norwegian websites).

So you basically have to import it from another country (take care of shipping and taxes etc.). If you have any trouble with the device you have to call Canada, and perhaps send it in and wait for 4-8 weeks to get your cell phone back.

MMS does not work with Norwegian carriers, I guess they just did not bother creating a BlackBerry setup/config and nobody created a guide for which servers to download from etc. but still..

They make great devices but with no places to sell them and no support, how can they increase their sales?

Technical people can obviously still buy these devices (or a Jolla), but the average user have to be extremely determined to even think about going for another BlackBerry..

[mpinco]

I would expect Blackberry to continue down the QNX path, adding hypervisor and ability to run Android / iOS as VM's later this year. This enables BB10/android or BB10/iOS. Security is maintained over running Android/iOS natively.

Can QNX hypervisor be run on current Passport infrastructure? Probably.

At least there will be more than just 2 phones (Android/iOS) vying for market share.

[Ben]

Tomi, I have to agree with you about the passport. I tried it for a week and sent it back. It looked awesome (IMO) and was most definitely a high quality piece of technology. Unfortunately the form factor was not for me as I can type MUCH faster on the stock BB10 onscreen keyboard. That said, there are plenty of fanbois out there that love their passports.

I'm not so sure about the Venice. Something E7esque in the form factor department would have been attractive to me. This - not so much. It looks like it's going to be almost as wide as the passport and I bet it will be thick too. Perhaps it will be a great pocket computer if that's what your looking for, but I also need something I can comfortably use as a phone all day everyday.

That said, BB10 is awesome. Sailfish aside, it's definitely the closest to what Nokia had going. The multitasking rocks and you don't get the sense someone is spying on every single tap you make. Email is top notch. My Z30 just kills it at email. You don't know what you're missing until you try out BB10. The hub and onscreen keyboard really are killer features. Too bad the camera sucks on my Z30. And the app situation is not good. If you put some effort into it you can get the google play store working now and can strip apps of their google play services dependencies - but that's not something an average user is ever going to do.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all

Blackberry results came out yesterday. 1.1B smartphones is all they managed to sell which is down 33% from Q1 and 33% down from a year ago. Their market share is now one third of one percent. They made a loss. The Passport did not save them. Now lets see if their desperation moves - Android and (probably separately) a slider - can stop the rot.

Keep the discussions going

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[SMS]

The father of SMS has passed away, Matti Makkonen died after a times of sever illness at the age of 63.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/matkapuhelinalan_uranuurtaja_ja_tekstiviestin_isa_matti_makkonen_on_kuollut/8112522