By Welp, photos and renders are no longer enough for the leak-craved crowd: it’s time for some nice, clear video. Baka Mobile somehow got their hands on a Blackberry Venice ahead of launch, and they were ballsy enough to put a hands-on look at the thing on YouTube.
The first impressions from the outside looking in is that it looks thin. We were worried about the device’s bulkiness after hearing it’d come with a slide-up hardware keyboard, but it actually looks no thicker than any average smartphone on the market. The sliding mechanism also proved to be nice and fluid and didn’t seem to require much force at all.
The man in the video noted that the device felt very comfortable in the hand for typing, and that the weight felt evenly distributed throughout the entire device. This is important as a top-heavy or bottom-heavy device often makes for an uncomfortable typing experience.
Blackberry also incorporated a very neat feature that allows you to swipe through the OS by swiping on the keyboard instead of touching the display. Not only is it extremely cool, but also turns out to be very useful for a portrait slider as it means you won’t have to stretch your hand to do some continuous scrolling.
Other new bits we get a look at are software features. Blackberry hasn’t done a ton to Android from what we can tell. Opening the app drawer pulls up a slightly customized search function, and the notification tray’s quick toggles are accessed a bit differently than we’re used to. Otherwise, it looks as clean as any Android can, and we’re certainly digging that.
We weren’t sure how a Blackberry-made device with Android would turn out, but the Waterloo company seems to know exactly what they’re doing (which would be odd if they didn’t considering their expertise in making quality and solid devices). We can’t wait to hear more (hopefully) within the next couple of months. Check the video out above!
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