RIM: BlackBerry 7 OS Tops Android/iOS, Won't Arrive on Old Handsets

The new BlackBerry 7 OS from Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion is touted as being better than popular operating systems on the market when it comes to certain features.

According to the smartphone designer, the new platform release comes with a BlackBerry browser than would easily outperform both Apple's Safari on iPhone's iOS and Google's Android browser.

The new BlackBerry 7 OS is a performance-driven platform, RIM announced, adding that they focused on delivering a software that can offer “the ultimate in communications, multimedia and productivity for users around the world.”

The new OS comes with features like NFC technology (Near Field Communications), support fro Augmented Reality and HD Video, the aforementioned enhanced browser, voice-activated searches, and more.

At the BlackBerry World conference, RIM reportedly stated that BlackBerry 7 OS would offer 1.6 times faster page loading than on BlackBerry OS 6. Thus, the vendor considers it fit to compete against that said popular mobile platforms on the market.

But there's more to it, as the company also places its newly released BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone above the Apple iPhone 4 or Nexus One and Nexus S smartphones in many respects.

In the SunSpider test, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 managed to score 2.84 seconds, which placed it on the first position, followed by the iPhone 4 at 3.23 seconds, and the Android devices at over 5 seconds. The BlackBerry Torch 9800 scored only over 10 seconds.

Chances are that RIM actually managed to resolve any issues that prevented the BlackBerry devices from offering an impressive browsing experience.

However, it seems that existing BlackBerry users who would like to benefit from this bump in performance won't be able to do so unless they purchase a new handset.

The new BlackBerry 7 OS does not come with legacy support, which means that none of the existing smartphones would be updated to it.

Apparently, 7 might not be a lucky number at all, since Microsoft made a similar move with the Windows Phone 7 platform.

For the time being, we'll have to simply trust RIM on this, but we'll certainly learn more on how the new smartphone and OS perform after they arrive on shelves.