Recently we told you that BlackBerry would be launching its final in-house developed QWERTY smartphone early next year, codenamed ‘Mercury’. Two alleged renders of the rumored smartphone have been leaked online, showing off its physical QWERTY keyboard. Its marketing name hasn’t yet been confirmed, but it is being speculated that the handset could launch as the DTEK70 when it goes on sale in Q1 2017.
As the smartphone includes a physical QWERTY keyboard on the front, the screen size is a bit small at 4.5-inches. The exact resolution isn’t known at this point, but we can see that the display is curved slightly on both sides, somewhat similar to the BlackBerry Priv.
While early rumors had claimed the Mercury will be a mid-range smartphone, the latest leak suggests it is going to be a flagship smartphone. The smartphone is tipped to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 quad-core SoC under the hood and could feature a large capacity battery capable of delivering up to 2 days of battery life. However, we don’t think the DTEK70 will be able to compete against other flagships when it goes on sale, as the Snapdragon 821 chipset would be outdated in Q1 2017. Most flagship smartphones to be released early next year are expected to pack the Snapdragon 835 octa-core SoC, which is going to be a huge leap forward in terms of performance when compared to the Snapdragon 821. The Snapdragon 835 SoC is going to be manufactured by Samsung on its 10nm process node.
Via: GizmoChina
