We first started hearing rumors about the smartphone from BlackBerry that carried the codename Mercury back in June of last year. At the time, all we had to go on was that BlackBerry was working on three new Android devices and they carried the codenames Neon, Argon, and Mercury.
Neon and Argon have both been released since then (which we know of them now as the BlackBerry DTEK50 and the BlackBerry DTEK60. Then at the start of December rumors of actual details for the Mercury smartphone began to leak.
Such leaks suggested that it would come with a QWERTY style keyboard that BlackBerry is so well known for.
Other than a few tidbits about the device being made available on the Verizon Wireless network, we haven't really heard too much about this upcoming smartphone since then. That is, until CES 2017 when they previewed a new smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard that we have been hearing about. Images of this smartphone showed up again in a Twitter post from the official BlackBerry Mobile account last week too.
So it seems BlackBerry currently has plans to launch this new smartphone next month at MWC 2017 in Barcelona. We know it will be manufactured by TCL (the same company who manufactured the DTEK50 and the DTEK60), but that's about as much official information that we know right now. Interestingly enough though, a couple of new rumors claim to reveal the camera sensors that BlackBerry and TCL will be using for the upcoming smartphone.
If true, the device will be equipped with either a Samsung S5K4H8 or Omnivision OV8856 camera sensor on the front. This is an 8MP sensor with 1.12μm pixels that can shoot in 1080p at 30 frames per second. The same source has also revealed that it will be using the same camera sensor the Google Pixel uses on the back of the phone (we did a comprehensive breakdown of why this sensor is special). This is a 12MP Sony IMX378 sensor that can shoot 4K video. We'll have to wait and see if BlackBerry's post processing can match or beat what Google has in their Pixel phones, but the rumor suggests they'll have the hardware to back it up.
Source 1: @rquandt Source 2: @rquandt
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