BlackBerry is building up the hype over its upcoming flagship smartphone that is internally known as “Mercury.” Though the handset already made an appearance at CES 2017 early this year, the details about its official specs and features still remain pretty elusive. Such secrecy is of course necessary to grab the attention of consumers. Another way to establish a strong following ahead of its launch is through product placements, and that’s what the Canadian company did this week.
If you tuned in to ABC’s “Last Man Standing” on Friday night, there’s a big chance that you got a glimpse of the BlackBerry Mercury at some point on the show. It was actually hard to miss the smartphone, for Tim Allen’s character was showing it off in some of his scenes. The product placement was quite obvious, especially when the camera gave a good view of the device’s facade, which comprises a relatively large touchscreen display and BlackBerry’s famous QWERTY keyboard.
According to CrackBerry, the product placement that was made with Allen shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. The 63-year-old funny man is a huge fan of BlackBerry. The news site also mentioned that this could be part of a bigger marketing campaign for the Mercury, which is expected to become official at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.
Previously, IBTimes reported that BlackBerry will be unveiling its QWERTY smartphone on Feb. 25, the first day of MWC 2017. The device is expected to generate a significant following from consumers thanks to its unique form factor that meshes touchscreen technology and the physical keys well. Its design is even regarded as the perfect combination of the Priv and the Passport.
Although BlackBerry has yet to divulge the specs and features of the handset, several reports already indicated what the Mercury phone could be sporting at launch. Per the reports, the smartphone is to come with a 4.5-inch display on top of a QWERTY keyboard that does not slide-out just like the Priv’s. It also has a fingerprint scanner that’s embedded into the space bar. Lastly, the handset is reportedly running Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.