BlackBerry "Mercury" to be unveiled at MWC 2017, for real

The Samsung Galaxy S8's absence from MWC next month is probably a relief for many smartphone companies, as they no longer need to fight over the limelight with one of the biggest giants in the market. While that doesn't really change anyone's schedules, they can at least make a bigger noise. One that's sure to try and raise the roof is BlackBerry, who just teased on their shiny new BlackBerry Mobile Twitter account, that the "Mercury", real name still to be announced, will debut at MWC 2017. For real this time.

TCL actually already teased that the BlackBerry Mercury would have a presence at CES 2017 earlier this month. But instead of an actually announcement, TCL just teased that device does already exist but gave no hints as its full nature. The time for that, apparently, is at MWC 2017, when almost all smartphone makers, save Samsung, will try to make a big splash.

Not much is known about the Mercury, which might still be called the BlackBerry PRESS, based on an earlier tweet by TCL. The one thing that's sure, as already confirmed by its CES 2017 demo unit, is that it has a non-sliding physical keyboard in a traditional, non-square candy bar form. Given its date, we can pretty much guess the rest of the specs, like at least a 1080p screen and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, since the Snapdragon 835 won't be available to anyone else but Samsung until April.

The BlackBerry "Mercury" is going to be quite interesting given its design as well as its place in history, It could very well be 2017's most innovative Android smartphone, unless Samsung manages to convince us otherwise with a non-exploding device. BlackBerry has scheduled a 25th February date to finally show its hand and convince us that is, indeed, the case.

SOURCE: @BlackBerry Mobile