BlackBerry's upcoming 'Mercury' phone might be sold by Verizon

BlackBerry’s final smartphone that the company designed in-house may be sold by one of the top wireless carriers in the US. A new rumor claims that the phone, known as BlackBerry Mercury, will be made available when it is released by Verizon.

The info comes from noted gadget news leaker Roland Quandt, via his Twitter account. He offers no other info on the phone, such as a release date. Previously, BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen teased that the company would indeed release one last phone created in-house, with its trademark QWERTY hardware keyboard.

Previous rumors about the BlackBerry Mercury claim it will have a 4.5-inch screen, an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of on-board storage, a 3,400mAh battery and a fingerprint scanner. Some reports claim it will have Android 7.0 Nougat installed and ready to go out of the box. None of these reports have been confirmed by BlackBerry.

BlackBerry recently announced that TCL Communication has been awarded the rights to make any future smartphones with the BlackBerry branding, beyond the Mercury QWERTY phone. TCL has already promised it will be making some BlackBerry-related announcements next week at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. It’s possible one of those phones could also have a QWERTY hardware keyboard.