- Pros
Touch-screen BlackBerrys are finally viable. Great device and Web video search functions. Brand-new, world-class Web browser. Puts IM and social networking at the forefront.
- Cons
Still pretty pedestrian design. Lousy Exchange integration for consumers. Third-party app catalog still thin.
- Bottom Line
BlackBerry 6 keeps RIM in the game and makes it clear that they want to be the leaders on social networking and messaging.
The latest upgrade to RIM's BlackBerry OS is the biggest ever. No, this isn't a Windows Phone 7-type reimagining. BlackBerry is still BlackBerry, with the things you love (such as the laser-like focus on messaging) and the things you hate (such as pedestrian design and a lame third-party app catalog.) But RIM has finally cracked the touch-screen code here, delivering a new OS with new search, Web, and media features that works well on touch-screen devices.
The first BlackBerry 6 device is the BlackBerry Torch 9800 ($199.99, 
), coming from AT&T. The Torch uses similar hardware to the BlackBerry Bold line, and RIM has previously said that they'll try to make the new OS available to devices like the Bold, Storm, and Tour. RIM has a checkered history of being able to get OS upgrades through carrier approvals, though, so it's anyone's guess when upgrades will happen, if ever.
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Setup and Basic UI
For the first time, BlackBerrys are full members of the touch-screen world. BlackBerry 6 is a true hybrid system, where you can do almost anything through touch, on the keypad, or using the trackpad in between them.
Specifications
- Type
- Business, Personal, Enterprise, Professional
- Free
- Yes
Don't expect to see a lot of full-touch, Storm-style BlackBerrys, though. BlackBerry 6's two soft keyboards are clearly an afterthought; they have small, picky keys and few options. If you're going to type a lot, you'll want to use the physical keyboard. The main BlackBerry 6 home screen has an alert bar at the top that can become stacked with icons for new messages, IMs, Tweets, and calendar events. Tapping on it pulls down a list of alerts; tapping on a message drops you into the appropriate app.
Lower on the screen, there are icons for your four most frequently used apps. You can swipe to the right or left to change to icons for your mailboxes, for customizable favorites, for media, or for third-party downloads. Tapping or dragging on the category name makes the list of apps fill the whole screen.
You can turn contacts or Web bookmarks into application icons, but you can't (yet) put Web-based widgets on your home screen the way you can on Android phones.
Setting up BlackBerry 6 is much easier than previous BlackBerrys; the old, text-based setup and options screens have been replaced by clearer dialog boxes with good-looking, but still BlackBerry-like icons.
E-mail and Messaging
BlackBerrys were once the undisputed e-mail leaders. That's not true any more. If you have a corporate BlackBerry Enterprise Server, RIM's email is still unbeatable. But for consumers or "rogue users" with the BlackBerry Internet Service, RIM is now way behind the competition in syncing a range of e-mail accounts.
RIM's biggest weakness is with Microsoft Exchange. The iPhone and many Android phones sync Exchange contacts, calendars, and e-mails wirelessly, easily, and two ways. BlackBerry 6 with BIS only syncs emails, not contacts, calendars, tasks, or notes. Gmail support is also behind Android when it comes to supporting labels and folders. BlackBerry 6's story with instant messaging and social networking is much happier. A new "Social Feeds" app lets you swipe between panels for arbitrary RSS feeds, AIM, BBM, Facebook, Google Talk, MySpace, Twitter, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger, and you have various options to integrate those services into the alerts bar or into your universal inbox. Facebook, Twitter, and IM services appear on contextual menus in many apps, letting you share or upload different kinds of content. The official Twitter and Facebook clients are both good looking.
Media Features and Universal Search
There's a ton of new media features in BlackBerry 6. A new podcast application lets you download and subscribe to podcasts. New music and video players are more attractive, with better uses of video thumbnails and album art. Wi-Fi music syncing lets you wirelessly refill your BlackBerry's memory when you're on the same Wi-Fi network as your desktop PC. And BlackBerrys now sync with Windows Media Player.
The most unique new media app, though, is "Web Video Search." More than just a search app, it's a high-level browser for multiple online video sites, including YouTube, Dailymotion, ifilm, MobiTV, MSN, and others. The YouTube link on BlackBerry 6 just goes to YouTube's mobile Web page, but this is the real deal, a truly native app with a neat carousel UI. Dragging down video from its multiple sources, it goes much deeper than the traditional YouTube app, which makes it a lot of fun.
Web video isn't the only search innovation here. BlackBerry 6 comes with universal search; just start typing and the OS will search through contacts, apps, messages, calendar entries, and Google to find what you're looking for.
The New Web Browser
RIM's new Web browser, provided by their Torch Mobile acquisition, is a major step forwards. The new browser is powered by WebKit, the same engine that runs the iOS and Android browsers. Desktop-style pages look true to life. JavaScript performance is finally viable. Adobe says that Flash support will be coming later this year. The new browser has tabs, it has pinch-to-zoom, and if you double-tap on a column of text it zooms in and reformats the column for easy reading without horizontal scrolling.
One of the new browser's features is invisible, but it could save you money: almost all data coming through to the BlackBerry will be compressed two to three times, RIM execs told me. That means you could potentially get more e-mails and Web pages on limited data plans than you could with competing OSes.
But the new BlackBerry browser on a Torch 9800 is still slower than both the speedy alternative Bolt browser on a BlackBerry 9650 ($199.99, 
) and the iOS browser on an Apple iPhone 4 ($199.99-$699, 
). The standard BlackBerry screen resolution of 360-by-480 also means you don't see as much of a Web page as on other high-end phones. Ultimately, what you think of the new browser depends on where you're coming from. Do you own a BlackBerry? You'll be singing hallelujahs. Comparing the browser to, say, Dolphin HD on an Android phone? It's a step backwards.
Third-Party Apps
There's one big advance for app hounds in BlackBerry 6: carrier billing. The new version of App World included in 6—which is also in beta testing for BlackBerry 5 phones—lets you charge purchases to your AT&T bill rather than PayPal. You'll also be able to use credit cards. That will make buying apps much easier.
Programming apps, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have become much easier here. RIM has focused on giving programmers tools to create "super apps" which add contextual menus across the BlackBerry experience for things like social networking and photo uploading.
There's no news for game lovers, though. The BlackBerry platform is stuck at OpenGL ES 1.1 without 3D extensions, which means you won't see the caliber of games that you've been seeing on iOS and you're starting to see on Android.
BlackBerry Desktop 6
The new OS comes with a new, faster, and more streamlined version of BlackBerry's desktop software. Desktop 6 will initially be available only for Windows machines, though RIM is also working on an upgrade for their Mac software.
Finally, BlackBerry Desktop feels like one app rather than a cobbled-together mess of plug-ins. The biggest changes here are in media syncing, which is dramatically faster than it used to be. Syncing over playlists from iTunes and videos from a PC is quick and easy.
Desktop also still syncs contacts, calendars, notes, and tasks with Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, which is critical for "rogue" business users without BlackBerry servers. Syncing went smoothly, but with one very annoying point. If you're syncing contacts over-the-air with Google, Desktop will refuse to also sync your contacts with Outlook—you have to choose one or the other. RIM should be able to merge those contact books the same way many Android phones do.
Conclusions
BlackBerry 6 isn't a complete overhaul, but neither is it skin-deep. It keeps RIM in the game, but doesn't push them to the fore. Clearly, we're going to see a lot of BlackBerrys with touch screens and keyboards over the next year or so, and they're going to have a lot of focus on messaging and media. The new Web browser is also a very welcome change.
But mobile OSes aren't all about built-in features any more. The tools that smartphones give to app developers are critical, and that's where I'm more worried about BlackBerry 6. Developers don't love to write programs for BlackBerrys; the platform's APIs aren't as extensive as those in iOS 4 or Android 2.2, and BlackBerry App World needs better billing practices.
BlackBerry 6 is an obvious upgrade for existing BlackBerry users. There's no down side. It also looks like a great OS for people upgrading from texting phones. The built-in data compression and ability to turn almost anything into a context menu are unique. But we just don't see this new OS drawing the momentum away from iOS and Android yet.
