BlackBerry’s upcoming Mercury phone has been the subject of a number of leaks that paint it as a rather odd device, and the newest leak, showing the phone with an oddball screen resolution and near-stock implementation – Android Nougat without a navigation bar, is certainly no exception. The leak comes courtesy of Roland Quandt, and shows the device as having a total DPI working out to about 420, making for a pretty detailed panel. The leaked screenshot shows a stock Nougat background and icons on a mostly unmodified stock Android launcher, but with a few extra bits and bobs that aren’t normally pre-loaded onto any Android phones besides BlackBerry devices, like BlackBerry’s own messaging app.
The leak fits in nicely with what we know so far about the BlackBerry Mercury, being that the device has an unusually shaped 4.5 inch screen, and a keyboard that could easily incorporate hardware navigation buttons. If this latest leak is legitimate, it seems that the phone will also be using the same sort of mostly-stock BlackBerry software that phones like the DTEK50 and DTEK60 make use of, with stock Android on the surface, and BlackBerry apps and security tweaks underneath. Previous leaks concerning the BlackBerry Mercury all align thus far, which means that the design conventions that we’re seeing now are quite likely to be what makes it into the final product.
The legacy of the BlackBerry Mercury, also known as the DTEK70, began back in November, when BlackBerry CEO John Chen stated that the company’s signature smartphone design, complete with a hardware keyboard, would be making a comeback. Which would make it a different device to the slide-out nature of the PRIV or the all-screen nature of the DTEK50 and 60. Since that initial announcement, a number of renders have come through, bringing us to where we are now. The BlackBerry Mercury could be the very first Android phone to have a true BlackBerry signature candybar form factor (with the famous BlackBerry keyboard). Although, with TCL now seemingly at the helm of hardware design and implementation, there’s no way to know right now if it will be the last.