The upcoming Mercury will be the last phone designed by BlackBerry

LAS VEGAS — We still don't know much about Mercury, the upcoming BlackBerry handset manufactured by Chinese tech company TCL, but we now know it will be the last handset designed and engineered in-house by BlackBerry.

CEO John Chen confirmed as much Thursday during a press event at CES, reiterating his desire to get BlackBerry out of the handset business.

"The last model we engineered and designed ourself, yes that will be the last one," Chen said of the Mercury, which will be released sometime in 2017.

That may sound like bad news for BlackBerry loyalists but the CEO said the shift will actually enable the company to get more of its handsets on the market via partnerships since it will no longer need to devote its resources to hardware. Read more...