Future BlackBerry Smartphone May Run Android: Report

Today’s topics include Blackberry’s plans to run Android on a future smartphone, Amazon Web Service’s offer of powerful, fast cloud offerings, Microsoft’s scrapping of “Modern Skype” ahead of Windows 10, and a new surfing watch that uses a smartphone app for tidal, weather, and surf data.

BlackBerry, which has stood fast with its own operating system for its products for years, is now looking at running Android on a future BlackBerry smartphone as it fights to remain relevant in the marketplace.

The Android possibility was raised in a June 11 Reuters report, and such a phone could include some of the patented features in the BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Amazon Web Services is offering up its latest general-purpose virtual servers that come with a powerful custom Intel processor and networking technology that can reduce latency between instances by 50 percent or more.

AWS officials on June 11 announced the M4 instances for their Elastic Compute Cloud, which also include dedicated bandwidth to Amazon’s Elastic Block Store for storage.

The world’s top cloud provider is offering five versions of the latest instance, with virtual CPU count ranging from two to 40, memory from 8 gigabytes to 160 gigabytes, and network performance as high as 10 gigabits per second.

Next month, in preparation for the arrival of Windows 10, Microsoft is dropping the modern Skype app for Windows PCs, leaving only the desktop version, the company announced.

Aga Guzik, head of desktop product marketing at Skype, claimed in a statement that it makes sense to use the Skype application optimized for mouse and keyboard use, capable of doing touch as well, rather than having two applications performing the same function.

The new Shark Tooth surf watch from Freestyle USA connects with an Android or iOS smartphone app to provide up-to-date tide, weather and related surf data to active wearers, whether they are boating, surfing, swimming or participating in other water-related activities.

The Shark Tooth smartwatch retails for $120 and connects to smartphones through a free app that can harness real-time surf, tide and weather data for thousands of locations around the world.

The app also includes activity tracking and the ability to control a smartphone’s camera and music applications, according to Freestyle, which describes itself as a California beach culture brand.