BlackBerry Vienna to be the company’s second Android smartphone, comes with always-present physical keyboard

BlackBerry has released the BlackBerry Priv this month, as rumored, with the company’s first Android smartphone receiving much publicity and popularity via Amazon in the US. Now, before the dust even starts flying on the Priv, a new leak points to BlackBerry’s preparation of another Android phone with a twist.

The photo comes from BlackBerry fan site CrackBerry, and shows a new phone with an always-out QWERTY keyboard (no slide in/out keyboard, as with the Priv) with four colors to choose from: red, navy blue, gray, and black. The device is codenamed “Vienna,” as opposed to the BlackBerry Priv that was codenamed “Venice.”

The BlackBerry Vienna, if it arrives to market, will prove to be the second Android handset released by BlackBerry, a nostalgic phone manufacturer who will do anything to save the company from destruction and death. BlackBerry has come to the realization that Android smartphones are the most popular in the world right now, and BlackBerry’s BlackBerry OS (BBOS) hasn’t helped the company out of its current financial state. BlackBerry has been known as a force of internet privacy and security in the world, and Android manufacturers could learn a thing or two about privacy and encryption from the Canadian manufacturer.

The BlackBerry Vienna would prove to be a different device in that, unlike the BlackBerry Priv, it would rely on a physical keyboard as an unashamed part of the device’s design. The BlackBerry Priv, in contrast, has a slider keyboard that can be slid out of view in order to maintain a fashionable smartphone look.

We don’t have any other details on the BlackBerry Vienna right now, but, whatever else BlackBerry intends to do with this device, we have one request: please don’t take away the codename. We don’t want another device named “Priv.”

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