Blackberry Brings Back QWERTY? New BB Mercury Live Images Released

BlackBerry has admittedly it had little luck with its more recent models - just look at the DTEK50 and 60. The tech company's last hurrah before discontinuing its production of its own hardware is the anticipated BlackBerry Mercury.  It was only last October when the company confirmed the model's imminent release.

 Rumors of the phone were spreading as early as June this year but only late this year did CEO John Chen confirm its existence. Only recently have live images of the Mercury been released. The images bear quite a resemblance to last June's leaked images, and so the rumors may just have some credibility.

With the live pictures, we see the BlackBerry Mercury's less than subtle front camera as well as the phone's proximity sensors next to the earpiece. The camera is looking to be 8MP in size, while the back camera should be 18MP. On the specs side of things, the Mercury has the manual QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry has become well-known for. It also has the company's signature less than conventional standard in screen aspects in the form of its 3:2 ratio, 4.5-inch screen size.

It's slated to run smoothly with its 2.0GHz Qualcomm chip CPU, 32GB of memory, and a medium-range 3GB of phone RAM. Design-wise, the new phone is looking to be either a "love it" or "hate it" kind of product. Some users readily appreciate physical QWERTY keyboards, and so the Mercury is a welcome oasis in an ocean of big-screened touchpad smartphones. Others would prefer the industry standards in the form of iPhones and Samsung phones.

The BlackBerry Mercury will be running the standard Android OS, although it doesn't look to be Nougat. Early-release models have been seen cropping up all over the place, so reviews of the model shouldn't be too long of a wait now.

Stay tuned to SWR for more updates and latest news on BlackBerry Mercury release date, specs and price details.