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BlackBerry's 'Mercury' phone is now the KEYone
What was once known as the BlackBerry "Mercury" is now the KEYone. (Yeah, I don't like the name either.) At a press conference in Barcelona, TCL -- the new steward of BlackBerry's hardware efforts -- introduced, or rather re-introduced, its first Android handset with a QWERTY keyboard. It's a tall, enterprise-friendly smartphone with BlackBerry's DTEK software dumped on top of the OS. You can expect a fairly clean version of Android, but with the BlackBerry Hub and a few other apps aimed at business types. Clearly, this is a niche device: Unlike the DTEK50 and DTEK60, which ditched the physical keyboard, this is a phone for the BlackBerry purists.
We're live from BlackBerry Mobile's MWC 2017 press conference!
And so it begins. The first big press conference of MWC 2017 is all about BlackBerry, specifically the so-called "Mercury." We were pretty big fans when we first met the QWERTY keyboard-packing phone at CES, a lot of you were too -- hopefully today's press conference sheds a lot more light on what's running inside of it and we can get our hands on one. With any luck, TCL and BlackBerry Mobile will have a few surprises for us, too, but we'll just have to wait and see: the event starts at 7PM here in Barcelona, 1PM Eastern and 10AM on the west coast. Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.
BlackBerry's keyboard lives on in TCL's 'Mercury' prototype
Eagle-eyed BlackBerry fans (if there are any left) have probably been following the rumors about a device that is supposedly codenamed Mercury. They may have even caught the little teasers that TCL Communications president Steve Cistulli has been sharing on his Twitter in the past day. To no one's surprise, the reports were true, and TCL has indeed been working on its first BlackBerry handset since it bought the brand. Mercury isn't the upcoming smartphone's official name (although how cool would it be if it were!), but the company is going with the flow and adopting it as a placeholder name for now. Indeed, even though we saw an intriguingly familiar and striking prototype here at CES 2017, much of the phone's specs are still unknown. Cistulli couldn't yet share information on price or availability, but was happy to show us the working model and highlight three features the company can confirm. From my preview, the Mercury looks to be a better-looking, non-sliding BlackBerry Priv, and has the potential to please fans and perhaps even win over new customers.
