BlackBerry Mercury reportedly headed to Verizon

Last week, BlackBerry and its new hardware partner, TCL, confirmed that next generation BlackBerry smartphones would be unveiled at CES 2017 in early January. While there are no official details about these upcoming handsets, one of them might be the BlackBerry Mercury (model number BBB100) - an Android 7 Nougat-based phone with a hardware QWERTY keyboard and a 4.5-inch touchscreen display.

According to Roland Quandt (who has provided reliable info in the past), the BlackBerry Mercury will be released in the US by Verizon Wireless. Unfortunately, there's no word on when the handset is supposed to hit shelves, but we assume it's going to happen in the first half of 2017. Also, the device will almost surely be offered unlocked, too. As you probably know, Verizon is currently selling the BlackBerry Priv, so the Mercury could become the carrier's second Android-based BlackBerry.

Not long ago, we saw several images allegedly showing the BlackBerry Mercury, but, for now, we can't be sure of their authenticity. In any case, this seems to be a mid-range (and hopefully not too expensive) smartphone. Besides a 4.5-inch screen and a hardware QWERTY keyboard, the BlackBerry Mercury is expected to feature an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, fingerprint scanner (integrated into the space bar), 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage space, and a pretty generous 3400 mAh battery.

The Mercury might be the last smartphone designed in-house by BlackBerry. We'll bring more on this device as soon as new details are available.

source: Roland Quandt (Twitter)