BlackBerry 6 Now Official, Supports Existing Smartphones

On August 3rd, Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion announced officially the launch of its new operating system for handsets, the BlackBerry 6 OS, which comes with many of the popular features of the platform, while offering a fresh look and a new experience to end users. The new platform version comes with a brand new interface, as well as with touchscreen optimizations, enhanced music features, improved connectivity with social media destinations, a new Universal Search tool, and an efficient WebKit-based browser.

“BlackBerry 6 is the outcome of RIM’s ongoing passion to deliver a powerful, simplified and optimized user experience for both touch screen and keyboard fans,” said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-ceo, Research In Motion. “Following extensive research and development to address consumer needs and wants, we are delivering a communications, browsing and multimedia experience that we think users will love, and we are thrilled to debut BlackBerry 6 on the amazing new BlackBerry Torch smartphone.”

When it comes to the new features the BlackBerry 6 platform comes to the market with, RIM notes the fluid interface, meant to offer a more intuitive navigation. The solution sports a familiar look, while being able to offer a productive and fun user experience, regardless the type of device used. The new OS includes multiple views (All, Favorites, Media, Downloads and Frequent) that enable people better organize their apps and content.

“Also new to BlackBerry 6 are visually-rich, context-sensitive Action Menus. Within a given application, by clicking and holding the trackpad or through an extended touch of the display, users can bring the most common actions or tasks of an application to the surface. In addition, users can seamlessly multitask by holding down the Menu key, which pops up a visual grid of all the applications currently running, so users can instantly switch between applications. A powerful Universal Search tool is also accessible from the Home Screen. By simply clicking or tapping the Universal Search icon, users can search for any content on their handset, the web or in the new BlackBerry App World, which is also integral to BlackBerry 6,” the handset vendor announced.

According to the leading smartphone designer, the new BlackBerry 6 OS offers compatibility wuith existing devices, including the BlackBerry Bold 9700, BlackBerry Bold 9650 and BlackBerry Pearl 3G. The solution is being delivered to the market on the brand new BlackBerry Torch smartphone (which was previously spotted around the Internet as the Blackberry 9800 Slider) and should be included in future devices too, RIM concluded.