BlackBerry will make one more phone with a physical keyboard

Last month, BlackBerry officially announced that it will stop manufacturing its own smartphones. Now it appears that the company still has one more device left for its fans, which will sport its signature QWERTY keyboard.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that the company is working on a new smartphone that will have physical keyboard. Unfortunately, he didn't reveal any details regarding this future smartphone, but thanks to leaks and rumors, we have an idea what the keyboard phone has to offer.

The phone is code-named Mercury, and may look like what you see in the image above, which shows the phone with a keyboard below the screen instead of having to slide it from the under the screen like the Priv.

It will reportedly have a 4.5-inch Full HD touch screen display with 3:2 aspect ration, octa-core Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, 18MP rear camera, 8MP front camera and 3400mAh battery. It is expected to ship with Android 7.0 Nougat. The launch is expected in Q1 2017.

Back in September, Blackberry decided to make strategic shift and announced it will not make smartphones anymore, instead outsource production to a partner firm, which will license BlackBerry's software and brand. Meanwhile, BlackBerry will focus on growing its software business. The recently launched DTEK50 and DTEK60 are rebranded Alcatel smartphones manufactured by TCL. These phones were launched in India earlier this week.


Via