Expecting the BlackBerry Mecury

Image from BlackBerry Website

There is much anticipation building as the tech world wait for the rumoured release of the BlackBerry Mercury, a highly-awaited flagship Android smartphone from Canadian Tech giant RIM.

Remember that RIM dumped its cool BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10 OS in favour of Google’s Android operating system following decline in sales of BlackBerry branded phones. This shift has seen them produce and sold out new range of smartphones donning the Android OS and in a bid to focus more on software development, RIM will be licencing its brand to an OEM who will be in charge of producing BlackBerry phones.

Earlier in January, the BlackBerry Mercury the last smartphone to be designed and engineered in-house (according to BlackBerry Twitter), was announced at the CES 2017 tradeshow in Las Vegas and is being produced by a company known as TLC. Though not available yet, the smartphone promises to be a decent pick in the market when it eventually goes on sale. Apart from its beautiful svelte aluminum design, the Camera is rumoured to be pretty decent and expected to stand toe-to-toe with that of many smartphones to be lunched in the year as well. But what makes this phone outstanding is the choice of adding BlackBerry’s Classic physical QWERTY keyboard to the specks for which I am sure BlackBerry die-hard fans will love. The keyboard is said to be able to allow phone owners to swipe over they physical key to interact with items on the display. It is also rumoured to have a fingerprint sensor on its keyboard’s space bar, with which users can quickly unlock the device.

Image from CrackBerry.com Twitter

Rumoured specs include:

GSM/HSPA/LTE Network.

4.5 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16m colors, full HD display, 3:2 aspect ratio display.

Android OS, v7.0 (Nougat).

Qualcomm MSM8996 Snapdragon 821 chipset.

microSD Slot up to 256 GB, 64GB internal storage, 4GB RAM memory.

A 13 MP primary camera featuring Geo-tagging, panorama, HDR, autofocus, face detection, dual-LED flash, 8 MP secondary camera, f/2.2,1080p.

A decent 3400 mAh Non-removable Li-ion battery.

USB Type-C.

The device is expected to be announced at the World Mobile Congress on February 25th, with information about its specs and release date to be made available. 

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends