BlackBerry's partnership with TCL has finally shown some good sign of life, a new smartphone is coming. BlackBerry and TCL are expected to reveal a new kind of BlackBerry-branded smartphone. The possible target place would be the upcoming 2017 Mobile World Congress event, which will be held next month.
After dumping the company's proprietary OS for Android, BlackBerry has released only one smartphone, the BlackBerry Priv.
Now, BlackBerry is expected to launch another Android-powered smartphone, of course bearing the BlackBerry brand name, featuring a QWERTY keyboard. That handset is poised to hit the market in the form of the rumored BlackBerry Mercury/DTEK70.
The Chinese manufacturing giant TCL, which now makes BlackBerry-branded handsets, has shown its next handset back at CES but did not provide much information about it, not even a hint. According to GSM Arena, the full unveiling of this rumored handset might take place in less than a month, GSM Arena is hinting a possible launch date and place.
The most likely launching pad for this kind of product, according to some analysts and tech pundits, will be the upcoming 2017 Mobile Word Congress (MWC) event in Barcelona, Spain, which will be held this coming February. Some analysts are already speculating that this will be the upcoming BlackBerry Mercury.
Additionally, there is another rumor coming out from the web, this time it's about the cameras. Reports said that the upcoming Mercury might feature the Sony IMX378 sensor on the rear, the same sensor used by Google for its Pixel and Pixel XL handsets.
If the reports are true, the crowd could expect something big here, the Mercury's main shooter will have a 12 MP resolution and even support for 4K video recording.
On the front, according to rumors, it will be either Samsung's S5K4H8 sensor or OmniVision's OV8856, that's would be 8 MP resolution and 1.12um pixels in both cases. That camera is said to record 1080p videos at 30fps.
The crowd gets their first glimpse of the Mercury device at the recent 2017 CES event. But BlackBerry was light at that event and has not provided many details about the device, not even a hint about the device's name.
MWC 2017: Possible Launch Date for BlackBerry Mercury
The next BlackBerry flagship has been teased by TCL on Twitter during CES 2017 event. According to TCL, the upcoming smartphone, whose codename is Mercury, will be officially launched at MWC 2017 this coming Feb. 25.
According to Rayena, Mercury is just a codename for the device, the official name is expected to come to light at 2017 MWC event.
