Microsoft Mercury image leaked, another canned tablet like the Surface Mini

Microsoft Mercury
Microsoft Mercury

An image has been leaked of a purported Microsoft/Nokia device from some time ago which never made the cut – namely the Mercury.

The Microsoft Mercury is a tablet that was apparently prototyped (the picture looks like a finished version, certainly) and then ditched before it hit production.

There's not a huge amount you can tell from the spilled image (which was aired by the prolific leaker Evan Blass), and no other details to go with it, although you can clearly see that the rear camera looks like a pretty chunky affair, and it also seems as if this was likely a compact tablet design.

If, of course, it ever existed at all – while Blass is generally fairly reliable when it comes to leaks, there's always a possibility this is a hoax from somewhere.

Of course, Nokia did produce a tablet, the Lumia 2520 which came out at the end of 2013, boasting a 10.1-inch full HD display powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core CPU, running Windows RT – an OS which meant it was an underpowered feeling slate on the software side.

Last month, it was also revealed that Microsoft had worked on a Surface Mini tablet – which was no great surprise given how strongly rumoured the device was – but that never made it to production either.

Apparently the Mini was a 7-inch slate which Panos Panay, who heads up the Surface team, described as "awesome". Not awesome enough to get made, sadly…

Via: Neowin

Image: Evan Blass

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).