So if you didn’t know, BlackBerry is out of the hardware business – but you’ll still be seeing BB branded phones out in the market. This comes from the licensing deal that the Canadian tech company has with TCL, who will be manufacturing the BlackBerry phones from here on out. There’s a new one coming out at MWC 2017 – codenamed BlackBerry Mercury, and we’ve got some new info on the camera specs.
TCL has been letting a bunch of tech blogs see the new BlackBerry Mercury without really giving them an idea about the specs. Roland Quandt of WinFuture.de tweeted that he has the lowdown on what kind of cameras the phone will have. He says that the main camera will be the Sony IMX378 camera sensor, the same one that landed the Google Pixel the top spot on DxOMark’s mobile camera scoring list. Of course, the software execution has a lot to do with the Pixel taking that top spot, but this is just to say that TCL is giving the BB Mercury flagship level camera sensors.
It feels like the rest of the phone is made for the flagship market as well. You’re getting a 4.5-inch FullHD display rumored to be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset and 4GB RAM. And because it is a BB phone, you’re getting what is possibly a top quality physical keyboard with it. Quandt also tweeted that the front camera will either be a Samsung S5K4H8 or Omnivision OV8856 8MP camera sensor, depending on the variant you’re getting.
BlackBerry has already tweeted that it will be showing up at MWC 2017, so we know that the BB Mercury will probably be launched there as well. There’s a good chance that hardcore physical keyboard fans will take a good look at this phone.
