Slash LaneRIM provided a sneak peek of BlackBerry 6 at WES 2010, the annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium for BlackBerry users. A video demonstrated flipping through album art, pinch-to-zoom on images, typing, and making calls — all with a touchscreen.
New features shown in the debut video include contextual pop-ups, a cover flow-like feature in the integrated media player, and a new WebKit-based Web browser that includes support for tabs. The video also pushes the social networking capabilities of the device, with integration with Facebook and Twitter.
Though the video focuses on the touch capabilities of BlackBerry 6, all of the features will also become available on RIM's other non-touch handsets as well. The company plans to update many of its existing line of phones to the new operating system, but has conceded that not all devices will receive an update.
Officials at the WES 2010 keynote said that RIM has redesigned all of the core applications within the BlackBerry operating system. It also revealed that there are 41 million BlackBerry users, and 90 million BlackBerrys have been sold to date. Co-CEO Mike Lazardis said he expects his company to reach the 100 million milestone soon.
RIM has touted the operating system upgrade as an "all-new user experience." The company had already announced on Monday that BlackBerry 6 would be available in the third quarter of calendar 2010, but did not include any details on the software.
The BlackBerry follows the already-released Google Nexus One, along with Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Phone 7, in offering multitouch capabilities on a mobile device, years after Apple pioneered the input method with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007.
It is rumored that the addition of multitouch functionality to the Google Android-powered Nexus One smartphone, via a software update, is what prompted Apple to sue the handset's manufacturer, HTC. Apple has accused HTC of violating 20 patents it owns that are in use in the iPhone.
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76 Comments
I am well-familiar with RIM's Handsets in our organization and while they do email well they have only slowly evolved their handsets and the richness of the interface. They have a long tradition (like Windows updates) of showing flashy videos of things to come while what arrives is always behind the times and stodgy, with no eye in the details.
Just curious as to how long the iPhone has had multi-touch?
It's surprising that they titled this "All New User Experience", then had three different people dancing to a song that had to be "bleeped" several times.....but barely showed the actual user experience. Yeah a few things swiped and a couple of virtual keyboard taps, but in the grand scheme of things, what was all new about it?
what an absurd, tacky, hilarious ad!!!
Nothing screams "hopelessly uncool" like a quick-cut ad with the Black Eyed Peas doing the soundtrack.
With Palm out of the picture (at least for now) and the new Verizon Droid going keyboardless, Blackberry seems like the biggest player in the physical keyboard category of smart phones.... There's a large category of people who still demand physcial keyboards (sadly my GF is one of them). Would have been a lot more effective for RIM to highlight what makes them different instead of looking like hacky copiers of the iPhone.