TCL Might Launch Blackberry QWERTY Smartphone at CES 2017

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Just yesterday, Blackberry had officially confirmed to made an agreement for giving the rights for making Blackberry branded smartphone to the Chinese manufacturer, TCL. This agreement came only after launching two smartphones in collaboration. The DTEK50 and DTEK60 are those two devices which are just the rebranded variants of the Alcatel Idol 4 and TCL 950 smartphones. Now, the TCL is teasing the launch of new Blackberry smartphone by using the hashtag #TheNewBlackBerry. Earlier, John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry had confirmed that the company would be launching one last device with the iconic qwerty keyboard.

The company made an agreement to give the full rights of designing, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of the Blackberry devices to TCL. But, we still didn’t get how this rumored qwerty keyboard device might come from Blackberry’s in-house design team. Steve Cistulli, the President and GM of TCL Communication in North America has tweeted saying “Remington No. 2 of 1878 #TheNewBlackBerry.” Here the Remington No. 2 is said to be the game-changing typewriter in those days. It is the first typewriter that can type in both capital and smaller letters. Now, we expect that one last Blackberry device with a qwerty keyboard will be unveiled at the upcoming CES 2017.

The images which are said to be of the upcoming Blackberry Mercury are already leaked. It comes with a wider touchscreen display along with capacitive navigation buttons and a qwerty keyboard featuring four rows of keys. The Blackberry Mercury might be named as the DTEK 70. Even the company will be introducing new features with this device. The fingerprint sensor on this device will be integrated into the Spaced bar. Apart from the volume rocker and power button placed on the right edge, we can find one more hardware button placed on the left edge. The device is expected to run on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box along with built-in Blackberry services.

Today, a new device is spotted on Indonesian regulator’s website, Postel with the model number BBC100-1, it comes from a company called BB Merah Putih, PT. While the already launched DTEK 60 came with the model number BBA100-1 and the upcoming Blackberry Mercury (a.k.a DTEK 70) is said to be the BBB100-1, now the newly leaked BBC100-1 can be DTEK 80. Unlike the Mercury, there is no other information is known about the newly leaked BBC100-1 smartphones. Talking about the specifications of the Mercury, the GeekBench listing revealed the device to come with decent high-end specifications.

Though the device in the image looks to come with a bigger display, the benchmark listing suggests the device to feature 4.5-inch Full HD display. It comes powered by the Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor clocked at 2.0GHz. There will be 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. In the camera department, there is an 18MP rear camera with LED flash and an 8MP front camera. Apart from the assumptions based on the above mentioned tweets, we still need to get the confirmation from Blackberry and TCL. Stay tuned for the official details of the upcoming Blackberry DTEK 70 smartphone.

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