BlackBerry shares quick look of the BlackBerry Mercury with MWC teaser

It is no surprise by now that the last in-house designed BlackBerry will be officially unveiled at MWC in Barcelona next month. Code named the 'BlackBerry Mercury,' this phone will feature a physical QWERTY keyboard (better than the one on the BlackBerry Priv) and the first fingerprint scanner ever to be found on a 'Berry. The biometric reader is ingeniously embedded inside the space bar on the QWERTY keyboard.

TCL President and General Manager Steve Cistulli sent out a tweet today that read "Bringing something distinctly different to #MWC2017 #BlackBerryMobile." It includes a GIF showing a spotlighted BlackBerry Mercury. Is it distinctly different? With the physical QWERTY under the screen, it certainly does not look like any current flagship model around. At CES earlier this month, BlackBerry brought along a prototype of the Mercury which we were briefly able to get our hands on.

The handset will reportedly feature a 4.5-inch screen (with the size cut back because of the QWERTY) carrying a 1080 x 1620 resolution. We've seen the Snapdragon 625 chipset rumored to be under the hood, and that would dovetail with the octa-core chipset used on the Geekbench test. 3GB of RAM is believed to be inside the phone along with 32GB of native storage. We could see an 18MP rear-facing camera on board, along with an 8MP selfie shooter in front. The rumored 3400mAh battery might be enough to provide users with up to two days of battery life.

Despite allowing us to have some 'hands-on' time with the phone, BlackBerry was mum on information relating to the handset's specs, pricing and availability. A lot of information about the BlackBerry Mercury is unknown at this point. By the time MWC wraps next month, we should know everything about this handset. According to Cistulli's tweet, the phone will actually be introduced on February 25th, two days before the February 27th opening of the annual event. 

source: @SteveCistulli