BlackBerry’s most recently launched device, the DTEK60, may not feature a physical keyboard like so many of their other devices in the past, but that doesn’t mean that there will never be another BlackBerry with a physical keyboard. Recently. BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen confirmed that their next device will have a keyboard, and a new leak from today showcases a BlackBerry with the familiar set of physical keys that many former and current BlackBerry users may have been used to at one point. Having said that, the leaked image has not been confirmed to be a BlackBerry even though the keys do seem to resemble the look of those on devices like the Priv.
The device in question is suggested to be the upcoming BlackBerry Mercury, and instead of having a keyboard that’s hidden under the display which reveals itself when you slide it up, the keys are out in the open for everyone to see. By the looks of it this potential BlackBerry could also be a little bit on the taller side although it’s also possible that the screen may simply be a little smaller so as to make room for the keyboard down at the bottom of the phone.
While the leaked images do show off a little bit of the phone’s design, it only shows the front of the phone and not the back, and there’s no BlackBerry logo that visibly apparent. The phone is on, though, and it is running on Android software which appears to be Android 7.0 Nougat based on what looks like the Nougat “N” icon sitting in the status bar. It also looks like the phone has a rather large front-facing camera and a large sensor, both of which sit on either side of the earpiece. With only an image of the homescreen, there’s no visible detail on hardware specifications here, and there weren’t any that were mentioned with the leak, unfortunately, so there’s no way to know what the hardware is like inside of the device. If this is the BlackBerry Mercury though, and if an earlier leak of what are thought to be the BlackBerry Mercury specs are to be believed, then the device should have a Qualcomm processor inside and 3GB of RAM.