BlackBerry confirms Android-powered Priv phone coming later this year
EVLEAKS By Parth Makadiya Forget about the rumors: BlackBerry’s Android phone is official. As part of the company’s quarterly earnings announcement released Friday, BlackBerry confirmed it would roll out an Android phone in late 2015. The company did not provide any significant details such as specs, pricing, or U.S. carrier partners, but BlackBerry did say the phone will be called Priv—as in privacy. “Today, I am confirming our plans to launch Priv, an Android device named after BlackBerry’s heritage and core mission of protecting our customers’ privacy,” BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in a written statement. “Priv combines the best of BlackBerry security and productivity with the expansive mobile application ecosystem available on the Android platform.” Chen’s statement makes clear that BlackBerry’s Android experiment is all about combining BlackBerry’s core appeal of security-focused apps and services with the popularity of Google’s consumer app catalo...