A trio of new BlackBerry Android devices are reportedly coming soon as the Canadian manufacturer continue the hardware fight.
BlackBerry posted poor sales with their first Android effort, the Blackberry Priv. BlackBerry posted sales of only 600,000 with the Priv in April. Despite the poor sales BlackBerry are carrying on with the new direction, they have taken. CEO John Chen did say earlier this year to expect two more BlackBerry handsets, by the end of the year.
The suited CEO usually talks in financial years and according to a source who was briefed on BlackBerry’s plans – Chen was doing it again. According to the source speaking to VentureBeat, we can expect three new BlackBerry Android devices per financial quarter, for the next three quarters.
The three devices are codenamed: Neon, Argun and Mercury. All three will differ in price and specs according to the source.
Neon
Expected first is the low to mid-range Neon, seeing as we just entered Q3 we could still see a release in August or September latest. The source revealed the following specs:
- 5.2-inch 1080p full touchscreen (no physical keyboard)
- Snapdragon 617 processor
- 3GB of RAM and 16GB internal memory
- 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 8-megapixel front-facing camera
Argon
The Argon is the most powerful of the three, expected to be released in October with the specs below:
- 5.5-inch QHD full touchscreen (no physical keyboard)
- Snapdragon 820 processor
- 4GB of RAM and 32GB internal memory
- 3,000mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0
- Fingerprint scanner
- 21-megapixel rear-facing camera and 8-megapixel front-facing camera
Mercury
Finally we have the Mercury and you might have guessed it by now, this is the model with the physical QWERTY keyboard. It’s expected to be released in January to March of 2017. Here are the specs:
- 4.5-inch HD display
- Snapdragon 625 processor
- 3GB of RAM and 32GB internal memory
- 3,400mAh battery
- 18-megapixel rear-facing camera and 8-megapixel front-facing camera
BlackBerry seem to be taking a lot on board after releasing the rather expensive Priv. With more modestly priced Android smartphones, BlackBerry could see some success in the Android and perhaps remain in the hardware side of business.
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