Images of mid-range BlackBerry Mercury confirm QWERTY keyboard

BlackBerry’s new mid-range handset, currently called the Mercury, could be with us very soon. The phone passed through GeekBench back in October and now some real life images of the device have appeared on Chinese social site Weibo.

• BlackBerry Mercury mid-range phone appears on GeekBench

The leaked renders of the Mercury showed a QWERTY keyboard and BlackBerry CEO John Chen had previously said the company was working on a new phone with a keyboard, and now we have our first glimpse at what it will actually look like. The Mercury is said to be the last device, or definitely last device with a physical keyboard, to be made by the Canadian company. BlackBerry’s other recent flagships, the DTEK50 and DTEK60 have been made by Alcatel. 

The two photos only show the front of the phone, so we haven’t been able to see what the rear camera looks like just yet, but the front confirms the physical keyboard, a slightly larger front-facing camera than previously shown and proximity sensors.

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Specs still haven’t been officially confirmed, but the general consensus is that it will come with a 4.5-inch full HD touchscreen display – BlackBerry is seemingly combining physical keyboard and touchscreen like with the Priv – a 2Ghz Qualcomm processor, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Cameras are expected to be 18-megapixels around the back and 8MP on the front and as also confirmed in the pictures, it will run on Android.