BlackBerry Venice spotted in the wild with stock Android Messenger app

The BlackBerry Venice is still a mysterious phone, if only for the simple fact that it hasn’t been announced yet or confirmed by BlackBerry. Yet and still, photos continue to pour in and leaks here and there are seen by those of us who want to know what’s coming next before any company announces it.

The latest leak on the BlackBerry Venice arrives courtesy of BerryFlow, a site that continues to stay afloat of BlackBerry news. The rumored BlackBerry Venice has been spotted recently at the Toronto Film Festival, with a photographer getting a snapshot of the phone at a glance of the phone’s side. You can clearly see the same edge on the BlackBerry Venice that can be found on Samsung’s Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy S6 edge+; this alone confirms that the design seems set in stone at this point.

We’ve also pointed out that the photos of the Venice so far show that it will run Google’s app suite, which is common to all Android smartphones (hinting that the BlackBerry Venice will, indeed, run Android as opposed to BlackBerry’s own BBOS), and the latest sighting shows a phone running Android’s stock Messenger app, courtesy of Google. This is shocking because, usually, BlackBerry’s smartphones have all run BlackBerry’s own BB Messenger app, not Google’s.

At this point, though, the BlackBerry Venice does run Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is a prerequisite for high-end smartphones. After all, with Google’s Android 6.0 Marshmallow on the way with its LG Nexus 2015 and Huawei Nexus that will be announced on September 29th, Android Lollipop will suffice but won’t come with the latest app permission customizations – meaning that users will have to approve all their app permissions at once, as opposed to individual app permissions found in Android Marshmallow. Since it’s been confirmed that the BlackBerry Venice will arrive at all 4 major US carriers in November, the Venice will arrive already one major update behind Google’s latest smartphones (but this is the case for other high-end Android smartphones such as the Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+, and the Galaxy Note5 as well).

Just know that for now, the BlackBerry Venice is in testing in public, which means that it will be announced at some point. Stay tuned to Aptgadget, as we bring you more coverage on BlackBerry’s mysterious Android smartphone.

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