Is this BlackBerry’s final hurrah? New images have leaked depicting what appears to be BlackBerry’s last in-house smartphone.
Two photos of a mysterious BlackBerry handset have turned up on Chinese social media site Weibo – a hotbed for mobile leaks, but tough to verify. The handset looks like classic Blackberry fare, featuring a prominent qwerty keyboard set below a mid-sized display.
What’s important is that the handset looks identical to the BlackBerry phone on the apparently internal BlackBerry presentation slide that was leaked back in June. And it’s no secret that the phone is coming, in any case: BlackBerry CEO John Chen confirmed that the company was working on a new smartphone with a physical keyboard just last month – a final stab at glory before BlackBerry calls it quits for good.
So what else do the new pictures reveal about the enigmatic ‘BlackBerry Mercury’ smartphone? Well as expected, the handset appears to be running on Google’s Android operating system, rather than BlackBerry’s ill-fated custom-built OS. There also appears to be a front camera, a front-firing speaker grill on the top part of the hone’s bezel, and antenna bands that ring the top and bottom of the phone à la Apple’s iPhone.
Otherwise, there’s not much we can ascertain from the images. Rumours so far point to the phone featuring an unspecified 2.0GHz Qualcomm chip, alongside 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The primary rear-facing camera is tipped to have an 18-megapixel resolution, while the front-facing secondary camera could clock in at a very conventional 8-megapixel resolution. And finally, the display is expected to measure 4.5-inches from corner to corner, with a less conventional 3:2 aspect ratio.
However, as with all rumours, take this latest leak – and any previous tips – with due caution. We won’t really know what BlackBerry has in store for us until the official announcement – stay tuned.
Related: Samsung Galaxy S8
Watch: OnePlus 3T review
What would you like to see from BlackBerry’s next smartphone? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
