We’ve been hearing for a few months now that a new BlackBerry-branded handset is in the pipeline. The company officially confirmed this last month at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017. The handset is going to be manufactured by TCL which is now the exclusive manufacturer of BB-branded devices in most markets. It confirmed this handset, codenamed BlackBerry Mercury, without really confirming anything about it. Now an allegedly leaked BB teaser suggests that the Mercury will be formally unveiled at MWC 2017.
Mercury is not going to be the official name of this device, that’s just the codename, even though BlackBerry itself has referred to this Android-powered handset as Mercury in the public.
The teaser mentions that this is the last smartphone that BlackBerry designed in-house and that it’s going to be unveiled on February 25th. The event is aligned with the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona. That’s also when we find out what this device is going to be officially called.
BlackBerry hasn’t confirmed the specifications of this handset but rumor has it that it features a 4.5 inch display, a Snapdragon 625 processor with 3GB of RAM and a 3,400mAh battery. It’s also expected to feature an 18 megapixel rear and 8 megapixel front camera, the same setup as the Google Pixel handsets, as well as the company’s iconic full QWERTY keyboard that will include a fingerprint sensor embedded in the space bar.
No word as yet on the pricing and availability information but we can be sure that the company will reveal that come February 25th.
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