BlackBerry KEYone is the Mercury's official name

Mercury is no more, but in its place, the KEYone hopes to be the beginning of a beautiful QWERTY legacy for BlackBerry.

The Mercury has a name, and the phone that rode into 2017 without one hopes to be a catalyst for a series of devices released annually by the newly-formed BlackBerry Mobile.

The phone we all know: it's a long candybar design with a slightly stumped 3:2 aspect ratio IPS display and a permanent QWERTY keyboard that fills in the remaining space of a traditional widescreen smartphone. That's the main selling feature on an otherwise mid-range phone that nonetheless sports some very nice design touches, a decent camera, and BlackBerry's well-regarded Android build.

With a 4.5-inch 1620x1080 pixel IPS display nested atop the QWERTY keyboard, this is the product that commands the attention of both BlackBerry Passport and Classic users — people who either stuck with BB10 — or have since moved on to other platforms but yearn for that hardware keyboard.

This is reinforced by the phone's 3505mAh battery which, coupled with a Snapdragon 625 processor, keeps it going for over a day and, for some light users, approach two days. With an excellent camera pedigree — it has an IMX378 sensor inside — this is certainly a capable device, and one that comes off as a well-rounded handset, especially given its niche market aspirations.

We'll have more on the BlackBerry KEYone very soon.