It has been a long time since BlackBerry launched a smartphone powered by its own BlackBerry 10 operating system. Despite making a big deal out of the BB10 OS launch a couple of years ago, the company was unable to win over customers from Android and iOS and ended up making Android smartphones. It has long been speculated that no new BB10 devices will be released and BlackBerry itself confirmed this at CES 2017 today.
All of the smartphones that it has released recently have been powered by Android. The upcoming TCL-made BlackBerry Mercury will be running on Android Nougat so BB10 is not in the picture anymore.
During its briefing at CES 2017 today in which it detailed its manufacturing relationship with TCL which will now exclusively make BB smartphones, the Canadian company confirmed that it has no new BB10 devices in the pipeline.
The company did say that it is “committed to BB10,” but that just means that it’s going to continue providing security updates and patches for the OS. Users shouldn’t really expect any major updates to the platform let alone a new device that runs on BB10 OS.
BlackBerry fans now have to wait for Mobile World Congress 2017 where more details about the Mercury will be confirmed. Even though TCL made the device official today it did so without actually confirming anything of substance about the Mercury.
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