The Blackberry Bold 9700 & Blackberry 9000 Review

Blackberry OS 6.0 on Bold 9000 and Bold 9700?

Written by sonic on May 12, 2010 – 12:02 pm -

Sorry for the delays in writing, we’ve had a new member to the family scheduled to arrive for a while now, but he/she’s 6 days overdue so I’m going to just jump right into the most exciting topic on the Blackberry calendar.

At the WES 2010 speech, CEO Mike Lazaridis revealed the launch of Blackberry OS 6.0, but he didn’t reveal too much about their new operating system. A few leaks and some videos indicate some quite shocking news, though.

Things like:

* Unified search (search built into every app blackberry wide)
* Youtube support
* More menu animations, more transparency
* Wifi UBS support with geo-coding and zip code stuff
* Bar code scanning features
* trackpad gestures
* Camera and focus features
* Social media features
* Tabbed browsing similar to Safari

There’s a video on Youtube as well:

Can we expect Blackberry OS 6.0 on older devices like the Bold 9000?

I think the short answer is no, although there’s no official information out, it sounds like the aim of many of the features contained in the new operating system are aimed at touch screens and trackpads. Perhaps even only trackpads… It’s been reported in many places and in many forums that The Bold 9700, Blackberry 9550, Blackberry Storm2 and other phones WILL get the upgrade and it’s an exciting time again to be a Blackberry fan, what’s not exciting is the timing…

Blackberry should have had operating system 6.0 out long ago, and operating system 5.0 wasn’t much of a feature upgrade but more of a neccesary basic overhaul. If the new operating system performs as well as the video’s show and indicate, we could be in for a VERY exciting time. However, I’m still not overly impressed with the OS entirely. It still seems much of the same. No dramatic changes. It’s still just enough for me to wait a few more months before considering Android.

More Blackberry OS 6.0 Rumors…

Apparently some are reporting that The Bold 9700 will not be running the full version of OS 6.0 as it requires 512MB RAM and the Bold 9700 only has 256MB…  RIM has said that Operating system 6.0 should be here in Q3 of 2010. It’s sad that iPhone OS 4.0 with multi-tasking will be out before the Blackberry flagship operating system that’s trying to carry the Blackberry good name into 2010 on shaky ground with Android and iPhone devices catching up super fast into the business world. The iPhone already supports a ton of enterprise level features and networking features and security options that once made the Blackberry so Famous. There’s still plenty a Blackberry can do that an iPhone can’t, but there’s a gaining list of what an iPhone offers, that Blackberry doesn’t… Namely in it’s web browsing experience and software availability.

The web browser uses the new WebKit features which of course may require other hardware and processing power that we’re not quite sure yet the Bold 9000 or Bold 9700 will have. Stay tuned as I will try and keep everyone up to date on this news. It’s very exciting and not that far away.

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Update… Several reports are out now showcasing the Bold 9700 running OS 6.0 pretty well. I admit I have not tried OS 6.0 on a Bold 9700, I have tried it on the 9780 (Which is essentially the same phone but with a 5mp camera and twice the ram), and I think it would be hard to bare without the extra ram….

I mentioned in a previous post recently that it’s now proven it’s *NOT* Possible to run OS 6.0 on a 9000 only due to RAM on board. Everything else on the phone would technically support it just fine. Sad, I know. We all wish they’d release a bold 9000 with 0s 6.0 because that thing was a killer beast to type on.

Tags: bold 9000, bold 9700, operating system, os 6.0, social, viral, web 2.0
Posted in Operating Systems | 8 Comments »