BlackBerry Priv spotted on Instagram running on Verizon’s network

The BlackBerry Priv has been something of a secret phone (thanks to the underwhelming announcement made by the company CEO), but it seems to be an experiment of sorts for BlackBerry, whose falling profits would motivate the company to do almost anything to have a phone that brings quick sales. Many believe that the company’s use of Android on any of its smartphones testifies to BlackBerry’s falling fortunes and its desperation to sell whatever it can – even if it must sacrifice a piece of itself and its OS to “get the job done” and brings smiles back to investors’ faces.

Well, we’ve known for some time that the BlackBerry Priv would be released on all four carriers, and we heard this news courtesy of retired leakster and Twitter member @Evleaks. Now, however, we knew that Canada would sell the Priv, but we had no specific timeframe for the Priv to start selling in the US. And, we hadn’t yet seen the Priv appear on any carrier, despite @Evleaks’s claim that all four major US carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) would carry the device.

Well, we now have confirmation for at least one carrier: Verizon. A BlackBerry Priv has been spotted running on Verizon’s network, with a notification that says “Enhanced Verizon Store Visits.” Now, this can only mean that the person in question decided to activate Verizon apps and came upon an app that tracks your smartphone when you’re in a local Verizon retail store of some kind. At this point, though, it does confirm that Verizon will sell the device, since a device that isn’t Verizon-compatible wouldn’t have an “enhanced store visits” notification.

It’s said that Verizon’s Enhanced Store Visits app will bring you items that you can purchase within the store to your smartphone, such as a phone case, for example, after you’ve purchased a new smartphone.

Verizon will get the BlackBerry Priv, but at this point, we don’t know when. We do know that BlackBerry will ship the Priv from its own stores online on November 6th, however, meaning that the device could show up at the doorstep of US carriers any day now.