BlackBerry has finally admitted defeat in the unforgiving smartphone arena after handing off all future device manufacturing to TCL, meaning future BlackBerry devices will be that in name only. The company is bowing out with one final "self-designed" phone, complete with a QWERTY keyboard at CES 2017 in January.
Although not much is known about the DTEK70/"Mercury" handset, a couple of renders have leaked online as well as a few specs. What is obvious from the above image, is that it shows what appears to be a fingerprint scanner integrated into the space bar. In addition, the DTEK70 will reportedly come with a 4.5-inch full HD display which curves off at the edges, with a speaker grille placed along the top edge and sensors on the top left.
Under the hood, the device should come with a 2.02GHz quad-core Snapdragon 821 processor and 3GB of RAM with a 3,400mAh battery. Around the back there will be an 18-megapixel camera with the front-facing one coming in at 8-megapixels. Previous BlackBerry DTEK smartphones, the 50 and 60, haven"t yet been updated to the latest version of Android, but the DTEK70 will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.
Pricing and availability is unknown at this point, but according to a source from Android Headlines, it will be carried by Verizon Wireless in the US. The same source also adds that although the smartphone has been designed by BlackBerry, the product will be built by Chinese company TCL.
The specs mentioned above are also subject to change, since there has been no official announcement or clarification from the source, so the aforementioned internals should be taken with a grain of salt.
We"ll be there at CES and hopefully we"ll be able to bring you more info on this handset when it has been officially announced.
Source and images: Android Headlines