14 DAY TRIAL // BlackBerry fans are probably anxious to find out more about the QWERTY smartphone that TCL is going to unveil at CES 2017.
Although this might not be the only device Chinese company TCL will announce next week, we know for sure the QWERTY phone that John Chen, BlackBerry's CEO, promised to offer to fans will be revealed in early January.
The smartphone is codenamed BlackBerry Mercury and some of you might have already heard of it. It's rather a mid-range smartphone that features a BlackBerry traditional QWERTY keyboard. The information has been confirmed and recently teased again by both BlackBerry and TCL.
But what about the other specs inside the upcoming BlackBerry smartphone? Well, it appears that some of the previously leaked information about the QWERTY phone doesn't match with the new details provided by Roland Quandt.
According to him, BlackBerry Mercury, or whatever the name, will not be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820/821 processor. Instead, TCL has decided to include a mid-tier octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 CPU inside the Mercury.
A global phone powered by Android 7.0 Nougat
Also, Quandt published a screenshot taken with the BlackBerry Mercury, which confirms a 1620 x 1080 pixel resolution (420 ppi density) for the rumored 4.5-inch AMOLED display.
Another piece of information confirmed by the screenshot is the fact that BlackBerry Mercury will ship with Android 7.0 Nougat operating system right out of the box.
Other highlights of the phone might include 3GB of RAM, 32GB expandable memory and a decent 3,400 mAh battery. A fingerprint sensor could be included in the space bar of the QWERTY keyboard as well.
BlackBerry Mercury will be a global device, so we expect TCL to bring it to just about every market, including North America, Asia, and Europe. It remains to be seen which countries will get the Mercury first, and how much the smartphone will cost.