14 DAY TRIAL // TCL was expected to announce a new BlackBerry smartphone during CES 2017, but the company has revealed that it’s actually planning to announce the new phone during MWC. The company showed off a prototype of the BlackBerry Mercury and revealed some details about the upcoming phone.
Steve Cistulli, TCL’s President and General Manager, North America has just posted the first official video of the upcoming BlackBerry phone. Company officials have recently said that the Mercury moniker isn’t actually the name of the new smartphone and that details about the device will be announced during MWC.
The video shows the QWERTY keyboard on the new phone and reveals its USB Type-C port for charging, along with other details. It will have an embedded fingerprint reader on the space bar and the keyboard doubles as a physical space bar. The fingerprint scanner will surely make unlocking the phone or authorizing transactions much easier.
The new phone will come preloaded with BlackBerry Hub
The upcoming BlackBerry phone will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box and it will be preloaded with BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Hub and a DTEK app for increased performance and security.
TCL has been teasing the upcoming phone in the past few days, but we would have to wait until MWC next month to get details about the device’s specs. Because of its physical QWERTY keyboard, the new phone is said to have a 4.5-inch AMOLED screen with 1620 x 1080p resolution and a 3,400mAh battery. It might run an octa-core Snapdragon 625 chipset, coupled with Adreno 506 graphics processing unit.
The new BlackBerry phone might have 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage, while rear camera capacity might reach 18MP, with 8MP in the front. The phone is said to arrive at Verizon later this year and other US carriers might pick it up as well.
Enjoy our official first look at what’s to come from the newest BlackBerry smartphone. More to come at MWC. pic.twitter.com/gHkwepCPbJ — Steve Cistulli (@SteveCistulli) January 4, 2017