BlackBerry have been treating their fans with rumors about an upcoming QWERTY phone. Over the past months, the alleged BlackBerry Mercury has been making rounds together with the Android-powered DTEK50 and DTEK60. Now, photos of what CEO John Chen said to be the last phone with a physical keyboard were spotted on a Chinese microblogging site.
As reported by Android Authority, the images found on Weibo depicted an Android Smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard underneath its display screen. GSM Arena also said that the photos were similar to what they found back in June but this time, features like the front facing camera and the device's light and proximity sensors are more "prominent".
But in terms of whole "BlackBerry-Android experiment" is concerned, the former Research in Motion (RIM) firm was able to release three handhelds: in November 2015, the 5.4inch Priv was released, while the DTEK50 came in July and the DTEK60 3 months after. If the news is correct, the Mercury will be the fourth BlackBerry to don the Android Operating System and the second, and probably the last QWERTY Smartphone.
Sources added that benchmark scores put the BlackBerry Mercury as a mid-range device. Last October, benchmarking site GeekBench posted the Mercury's single-core scores that ranged from 903-913 while running it on multi-core gave it a 5072 rating. Specifications meanwhile include a 4.5inch display screen, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. Running the Mercury will be a 2.0GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, while camera inclusions are set at 8megapixels in front and 18megapixels at the back. The BlackBerry Mercury will also tout a 3:2 aspect ratio and a 3,400mAh battery.
John Chen may be on point when he said that they still have one last QWERTY phone up their sleeve. The Mercury will come in as a viable option especially to those who were accustomed to BlackBerry's iconic keyboard but this time, it will come with a familiar and user-friendly feel of Android. It's the best of both worlds, to say the least; fans of BlackBerry will be waiting to get their hands - or thumbs - working the keyboard again.
