TCL Officially Announces A New BlackBerry Phone With Hardware Keyboard

TCL Officially Announces a New BlackBerry Phone With Hardware Keyboard

BY Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh is a 26-year old freelance writer from Kolkata, India. He loves to tinker around with his Android devices and flash custom ROMs on them....

All Articles by Rajesh Pandey

Published 4 Jan 2017

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BlackBerry (Alcatel, really) announced its newest Android smartphone at CES 2017 today: the Mercury. Weirdly, BlackBerry’s announcement was very short on details. The company did not unveil the full specs, release date, or the price of the handset. In fact, Mercury is not even the final name of the handset.

Nonetheless, what makes Mercury so special is that despite its portrait form factor, it comes with a standard BlackBerry keyboard. Yes, the same keyboard that BlackBerry handsets were once famous for. The keyboard is similar to what you will find on the Priv, BlackBerry’s first Android phone launched last year, but it now comes with a fingerprint scanner that is integrated into the space bar.

The only thing known about the Mercury, for now, is that it will come with a USB-C port and a 3.5mm jack. Its specs remain completely unknown, with the device expected to launch with Android 7.0 Nougat on board.

TCL says that it will reveal more details about the Mercury at around Mobile World Congress next month.

Are you excited about the Mercury? Or are you done with phones featuring hardware keyboard?

[Image Credit: Android Central]