RIM, whose low-key public relations style is the polar opposite of Apple’s iPhone hype, still hasn’t made a formal announcement about the new OS, but RIM co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis showed a brief video about it at the company’s annual Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Florida. Lazaridis said the new OS represents one of RIM’s biggest upgrades in years.

Stock analysts at the meeting were favorably impressed and gave a round of spontaneous applause when they were shown the video, according to reports.

Particularly good news for BlackBerry users is Lazaridis’ comment that the firm is working to ensure that the new OS will accommodate existing BlackBerrys. “We are going to try and do our best to allow people to upgrade to 6.0,” he said.

RIM’s other co-chief executive, Jim Balsillie, said that more powerful phone cameras and easy-to-navigate displays will appear in BlackBerry models soon. “You are going to see very powerful extensions on our part,” said Balsillie. “I don’t think you have to be too patient either.”

In recent months Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones have stolen much of the publicity thunder from RIM, but the BlackBerry maker still leads in smartphone deliveries. A new OS with a fast browser along with an improved touchscreen would help the firm’s image.

Earlier this week, RIM announced new phones for carriers and users on GSM and CDMA networks.

Resource:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224700089

Boy Genius Report said it got its hands on a BlackBerry smartphone running the OS 6.0 from a secret source at AT&T and wasted little time detailing some of the features within. When asked, RIM’s representatives declined to comment on the disclosed information.

The OS 6.0 prototyped home screen (pictured right) looks similar to the touch-screen BlackBerry Storm interface with a prominent digital clock, centralized wallpaper, and two rows of touch-friendly icons. Beyond a refreshed design, some UI changes we noticed right away include the e-mail and search shortcuts front and center above the wallpaper, and a sliding bar just below the wallpaper for filtering home screen icons by all and favorites.

The uncovered images also highlight a new browser–long RIM’s weak point–which is reported to finally make use of tabs and multitouch, and will be based on the open-source WebKit engine that drives the iPhone’s Safari browser

A refurbished music player dumps the bland-looking skin we see on our Bold 9700 running OS 5.0 in favor of a more sophisticated view that makes use of album art in a pyramidal, tiled design. We took one look and immediately equated the visuals to Slacker Radio’s BlackBerry interface, just minus the onscreen elements to mark favorites and block songs.

There are plenty more details to read from Boy Genius Report. Descriptions of the e-mail in-box, kinetic scrolling, and new mechanisms for tapping and holding the screen to surface a menu option caught our eye. The latter sounded much like the long press functionality found in Google’s Android platform. We’re pretty interested in seeing the OS for ourselves, just in case any errant engineers out there accidentally drop a newly decked-out BlackBerry in the bar…(oh, we kid, we kid.)

Resource:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003055-1.html

Research in Motion is another major player in the market which is finding it hard to compete against these two players in the smartphone markets.

Like Nokia, RIM has been working hard on improving their software platform to better support touchscreen devices.

And the company is likely to launch the latest edition of their Blackberry OS in the near future.

BlackBerry OS 6 is said to be optimized for the latest demands in the market like touchscreens and social networking integration.

The company is also expected to massively improve the web browser on the device to support newer web technologies.

It remains to be see how it would compare against Windows Phone 7 platform which is also expected to arrive later this year.

Resource:
http://stuff.techwhack.com/8676-blackberry-os-6