14 DAY TRIAL // Verizon is one of BlackBerry's most reliable partners in the United States, so the first smartphone to be launched by the Canadian company early next year will definitely make its way to Big Red's shelves.
The so-called BlackBerry Mercury will be announced in early January, 2017, at Consumers Electronics Show (CES) trade fair and is likely to make its debut on the market a few months later.
Although we don't know when exactly the Mercury will be released on the market, reputable leakster Roland Quandt claims he has reliable information confirming the arrival of the Mercury at Verizon.
We're also expecting the phone to be launched under a different name and to make its way into other markets as well (EMEA). The Verizon-branded model will feature both CDMA and GSM support, but since there will be an international version launched around the same time, that doesn't really matter.
A global version of the Mercury will be announced too
According to the cited source, the Mercury is the QWERTY smartphone that BlackBerry's John Chen promised would be the last device that his company would launch on the market before handing over the license to Chinese company TCL.
However, Quandt claims the Mercury is built by TCL, even though the design comes from BlackBerry. Not sure about the hardware design, though.
Another piece of information revealed by the leakster is the rather unusual 1620 x 1080 pixel resolution of the presumably 4.5-inch display that BlackBerry Mercury will include.
Previous reports also claim the BlackBerry Mercury will be powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, coupled with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory. A quite decent 3,400 mAh battery will be packed inside as well.
No word on pricing options for the moment, but we won't have to wait too long for these details, as CES 2017 is just around the corner.
