Just recently, BlackBerry came in with a teaser of the upcoming phone dubbed BlackBerry Mercury – a phone that will be on show at the upcoming MWC 2017 in Barcelona.
The phone was launched at the CES in early January, but only a few had the chance to attend this event that was held behind closed doors. Back then, not much was revealed, but what we can assure you is that you’ll be coming across a magnificent phone that has a physical QWERTY keyboard, something BB lovers should be yearning to see.
Right now, not so much is known about the specs and features of the BlackBerry Mercury. In fact, the “Mercury” tag is not its real name, but we’ll soon know this in a few weeks’ time. According to previous rumors, the Mercury, which some pundits also say could be called BlackBerry DTEK70, will have a smaller 4.5-inch display screen of unknown resolution.
People should really, really, REALLY stop saying the BlackBerry Mercury has a Snapdragon 821. It has a Snapdragon 625. Definitely. Really.
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) January 28, 2017
Under the hood, the Mercury will ship with a midrange processor – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 – that is paired with 3GB of RAM. There will be 32GB of expandable storage and apparently, you get a huge 3400mAh battery unit. The phone will also come with support for a fingerprint scanner, with rumors saying that it will be somehow embedded in the space bar of the physical keyboard.
While previous reports have claimed that the BlackBerry Mercury will ship with an 18MP rear camera, fresh leaks have just come in saying that the phone will share the same camera with the Google Pixel. This means you get a 12.3MP snapper on the back alongside an 8MP shooter on the front. However, this doesn’t mean that you’ll get the same quality of photos from both devices – software customizations are also key to this.
Like the Google Pixel, the BlackBerry Mercury also comes with Android Nougat out of the box, but the latter has an older v7.0 as opposed to the former’s v7.1.1. There had been speculations that the Mercury will also share the same Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB RAM with the Google Pixel, but as it appears, the compact variant of the new Google phones will still be superior in performance than this compact offering from BlackBerry.
Proof for my earlier tweets: BlackBerry "Mercury" BBB100 with 12MP Sony IMX378 rear cam, Samsung S5K4H8/Omnivision OV8856 8MP front cam pic.twitter.com/DSLzc0a4Fx
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) January 27, 2017
If the Mercury indeed comes with a 3400mAh battery, the Google Pixel will be nowhere near its counterpart thanks to the smaller 2770mAh unit it comes with. Still, it gets the advantage of being slightly larger in size with a 5-inch AMOLED screen with 1080p resolution.
Given that the BlackBerry Mercury is looking more of a midrange phone than a flagship model, it is possible that it will be a lot cheaper than the Google Pixel, which has a price tag of $649 for the base model and $749 for the high-end variant. We should know more details about this phone on February 25th.