Looks like the Blackberry is staging a comeback as TCL, the company's new hardware partner, officially announced the upcoming new-generation Blackberry smartphones. Reports also say that these new smartphones could be showcased at the CES 2017, which will be held on Jan. 5 to 8, and are touted to be "evolutionary firsts" in the mobile industry.

TCL, also the Alcatel manufacturer, had earlier announced its partnership with Blackberry, having bought out its global right save for India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, TechCrunch reported. The TCL-Blackberry deal gives TCL semi-exclusive rights to "design, manufacture, sell, and provide customer support for Blackberry-branded mobile devices," while the Canadian company will continue to focus on software and services.

"Evolutionary Firsts In The Mobile Industry"

The said partnership between TCL and Blackberry had already been inked barely a week ago before this huge announcement. According to TCL, the company is planning to reveal several new Blackberry-branded smartphones "in the near future." No date has been specified yet, but TCL said in a statement that they would provide a glimpse of these new Blackberry phones and more updates on their plans during the CES.

TechCrunch also reported that these new smartphones are part of the company's planned evolution to revitalize the Blackberry brand, which earlier launched its last two handsets: the DTEK50 and the DTEK60. The move is reminiscent on that of Nokia, which is also staging a comeback.

There are no details yet on how the new Blackberry devices under TCL would look like, but it's expected that one of them will feature the QWERTY keyboard that Blackberry is well-known for, according to Phone Arena. One of them could also be the rumored Blackberry Mercury, which will run on Android 7.0 Nougat with Blackberry-specific software and security, the report added.

Stay tuned for more updates regarding the new Blackberry smartphones.