The platform upgrade will bring support for direct Android APK installs

Dec 5, 2013 08:25 GMT  ·  By

Canadian mobile phone maker BlackBerry is preparing a new OS upgrade for the owners of BlackBerry Z30, Z10, Q10, and Q5 devices, and it could make it available for download as soon as the next month.

The new platform release, namely BlackBerry OS 10.2.1, should bring along various enhancements to devices, including a new Android runtime, as unveiled back in November.

Various unofficial builds of the new operating system iteration have already leaked online, yet no specific info on when the update will start rolling out to users has been provided until now.

However, new details coming from a BlackBerry Jam Direct virtual event that was held yesterday suggest that the Canadian handset vendor will be ready for the release of the platform upgrade as soon as the next month, N4BB reports.

BlackBerry has already provided developers with an updated SDK that offers a glimpse at said Android runtime in 10.2.1, but it has yet to finalize the details on the official OS release.

The new runtime will provide users with the possibility to directly install Android APK files on their smartphones, thus opening the door to thousands of applications that have been built for Google’s mobile operating system.

In mid-November, BlackBerry announced the new feature and also detailed it, confirming that it came with support for Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, and that Android software with shared libraries written in native-code, such as C and C++, would run natively on BlackBerry 10.2.1.

However, said support is still limited to specific system headers and APIs. Android applications that use Android Bluetooth APIs will also be supported in the new OS flavor.

Unfortunately, there’s no official confirmation on the availability of the BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 upgrade in January 2014, but chances are that the handset vendor will indeed manage to start rolling it out then, especially since it celebrates one year since the official launch of BlackBerry 10.