TCL Communication has dropped a couple of brief teasers for its new BlackBerry smartphone this week. Today the company is sharing a bit more info on the device, but we’ll have to continue to wait for a full reveal.
TCL is showing off its new BlackBerry phone, codenamed “Mercury,” at CES 2017. As expected, it’s got a candybar form factor with a physical keyboard. There’s a fingerprint reader embedded in the keyboard’s space bar, and you can use the keyboard’s capacitive touch tech to scroll through items on the screen.
Other tidbits revealed today include the fact that the Mercury runs Android 7.0 Nougat and that it includes a USB Type-C port. However, no solid spec details of the device or even its full name has been confirmed.
TCL does say that it’ll unveil the details of the device “around the world Mobile World Congress timeframe next month.” MWC 2017 runs from February 27 through March 2.
The BlackBerry Mercury looks like an interesting device, channeling the BlackBerrys of old and bringing the design to 2017, complete with features like a larger display and fingerprint reader. While many folks are now perfectly fine with tapping away on a touchscreen, there are likely still some people out there that long for a physical keyboard on their smartphones, and the Mercury is one of the only devices that’ll offer that feature. So if you’re longing to have physical keys below your thumbs, stay tuned for more details on the Mercury next month.
