What Was The Microsoft Mercury?

This may be another canceled Microsoft tablet we'll never get to hold

By Andy Boxall December 1, 2015

microsoft mercury tablet news lumia leak — Image used with permission by copyright holder

A mystery device called the Microsoft Mercury has been leaked, and beyond its general appearance and name, we know almost nothing about it. What’s more, and rather unfortunately, that may never change.

The Microsoft, or Nokia, Mercury was leaked on Twitter by @evleaks, and described as a device, “from the Lumia graveyard.” What’s pictured is a seemingly quite large mobile with a familiar brightly colored rear panel, circular camera lens and surround, along with Microsoft branding.

Although it’s not stated in the initial tweet, @evleaks goes on to say the Mercury was a tablet, something that’s impossible to tell from the picture itself. It’s an unusual design, with the almost centrally located camera lens, and no evidence of a flash unit; two things that make it look like a basic Windows Phone device from the Nokia back catalog.

Nokia only ever put its name on one Windows tablet, the Lumia 2520, while Microsoft has opted to use its own branding and the Surface name for devices larger than a phone or phablet. Judging by the proportions of the Mercury — the size of the camera lens, and the side-mounted buttons — it would have been smaller than a Surface, but potentially larger than a big-screen Windows Phone like the Lumia 1520.

Continuing into the world of cancelled Windows devices, that may have put the Mercury alongside the long-rumored, and then killed, Surface Mini tablet. Perhaps the Mercury would have come in around 7-inches in size, and been a Lumia-branded product aimed directly at consumers? There had been talk of a Lumia 2020 several years ago.

Like the 8-inch Surface, we’ll probably never know the full story, because if the leak is accurate the Mercury is already six-feet-under. Aside from these two canceled devices, we’ve also had a peak at a Nokia smartwatch-that-never-was recently, meaning Microsoft’s dangerous close to ditching a greater number of devices than they have actually announced over the past months.

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