"Mercury" is not really the official name of the phone yet, but most people refer to it as such. Blackberry has announced that it had licensed its phones to China's TCL who would manufacture and release them under the Blackberry brand. The "Mercury" will be the first Blackberry phone produced under TCL.
According to Digital Trends, Blackberry has not released hardware specifications yet, nor the price or the release date. The official details will be announced around the time of Mobile World Congress next month.
For the design, though, the Mercury has the classic QWERTY keyboard. It has capacitive gesture capabilities which similar to the Priv's physical keyboard - meaning, you can swipe horizontally or vertically to move through your home screen, and can even scroll through the apps.
But unlike the Priv, it does not have a sliding display and it doesn't have the traditional smartphone shape with a full-faced touch-display, either. It looks like the Silver Edition BlackBerry Passport, and some standard features are kept, like the three capacitive buttons.
The new Blackberry phone has a more regular touch screen aspect. Reports suggest that the Mercury won't have the usual widescreen 16:9 ratio, but rather a 3:2 ratio display. Also, it is claimed to measure just 4.5-inches diagonally, but would still pack in a panel with full HD resolution.
Also, there is a fingerprint reader in the divot of the spacebar, which makes the Mercury up to date, CNet reported. The phone has a headset jack up top and a USB-C port at the bottom. Power button is on the left, while a volume rocker and TCL's longstanding function key is on the right.
TCL won't confirm the Blackberry Mercury's processor though, but it is said that it will be running some version of Nougat. Hardware and software are not final.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
