The Blackberry Priv May Be Blackberry’s Last Hope
Blackberry helped usher in the smartphone era but they have quickly fallen from their perch and are struggling to stay relevant. There was hope that Blackberry 10 would revitalize the company but despite a putting together pretty decent OS, the lack of developer support really hampered any sort of growth. In another effort to turn things around, the company has turned to Android to power their upcoming device, the Blackberry Priv, and according to a new report, the Priv may be the last hope for the company.
In a recent interview with The Verge, Blackberry CEO John Chen stated that the company needs to sell 5 million devices a year to turn a profit and if they fail to hit this target again, they may very well exit the handset business altogether. Now the Priv is due out by the end of the year so it would appear that the fate of Blackberry is very much resting on their first ever Android powered device.
On paper, the Priv is definitely worth a look as it should have the specs to hang with most Android flagships. It’s expected to sport a curved QHD display powered by a Snapdragon 808 processor and 3GB of RAM. It should also have 32GB of expandable storage, 18MP camera and 5MP front facing camera. The big selling point though is the keyboard which is tightly tucked beneath the screen via a slider mechanism. The Android market really doesn’t have any solid physical keyboard wielding options so this device does stand out but the question remains, now that we’ve all adjusted to on screen keyboards is there still a place for the physical option?
While I haven’t personally every used a Blackberry for any length of time, I do hope the company succeeds as I’d hate to see one of thee former giants in the phone market disappear.