Android 6.0 comes to the BlackBerry PRIV in the May update

BlackBerry just announced the release of Android 6.0 for their PRIV phones as part of their May update. Proving that they're truly committed to bringing the best Android experience they can to their users, BlackBerry have announced that in just a week, starting on May 3rd, BlackBerry PRIV units will get the Android 6.0 upgrade delivered to them. Here's a quick overview of the changes: The official BlackBerry release states that the update will bring many changes that will improve on PRIV's features:

• Customized Personal Data Permissions
• Clearer Notification Settings
• S/MIME Support
• An enhanced BlackBerry keyboard (with more gestures, more emoji, better cursor control and better word prediction)
• Better notifications (with a mute indicator and a new BlackBerry launcher)
• New apps in the BlackBerry Hub (see the image on the right)
• Slow-motion video
• Media Card encryption support
• App Standby and Doze, for better battery life

Beta testers have already received the update and they're reporting seeing these "nifty changes", but a lack of upgrade in essential areas, like battery life. Since they're still on a beta and haven't gotten the stable release, here's hoping that the 6.0 upgrade will help with battery life as well. Seeing that barely 4% of Android devices are running Android 6.0, BlackBerry are positively early adopters of the current Android release, and they pride themselves with this in their official statement:

PRIV is among an elite group of smartphones running Marshmallow, which was released in October 2015. As of April 4, only 4.6% of Android smartphones were running it, though adoption is slowly climbing. PRIV’s place as an early Marshmallow adopter, less than a month after we started beta testing it, makes perfect sense – we have been aggressive in rolling out Android security updates faster than most Android device manufacturers.

So, good news for PRIV owners and hopefully they're going to join in the ranks of manufacturers that get the newest Android versions fast on their devices. Image sources: theverge.com, blackberry.com