Multi-touch BlackBerry OS 6.0 may come out early

24th April, 2010 by adina
Tags: , , ,

The first screens and features of the new BlackBerry OS 6.0 have recently leaked. The OS seems to be touch-aware and it also supports multi-touch with pinch-to-zoom and other gestures as well, including the photo viewer and the browser. BlackBerry OS 6.0 benefits from momentum-based scrolling and also a tap-to-hold context menu; this makes the regression to the hardware BlackBerry button unnecessary.
According to BGR, the home screen button is slightly similar to the iPhone’s. The familiar buttons known from phones like Storm2 are present, but users can now also switch between multiple pages of application icons (for example, their favorites).
It seems that RIM’s dedicated music and photo applications are very similar to Apple’s. The audio player benefits from a Cover Flow-like navigator; the photo viewer offers a fast-loading set of thumbnails and also a tap-to-hide control layer.
The web browser, which uses the WebKit engine presented in the beginning of the year, is most likely the largest change; the engine used should offer more accuracy and speed. BlackBerry has added tabbed browsing, which seems to behave similar to Opera Mini, as it provides visual thumbnails, instead of hiding the existing page.
The new OS 6.0 brings a cleaner and more visual interface, which offers a “web 2.0” look, especially in BlackBerry’s e-mail client, for example. Even if the operating system has barely come to surface, it may be launched early; an AT&T contact is waiting for the OS until June or July this year. The unveiling could take place on April 27th at RIM’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium. It is still unknown whether the OS will be attached to a new handset or not. Rumors claims that the Talladega, also known as the BlackBerry 9900, will be out at the same time. An AT&T source says that a CDMA-focused Storm version is unlikely to come out first.
These changes could be very important to RIM, as the company has had problems promoting touchscreen interfaces for its smartphones. Until the release of the new OS will take place, BlackBerry OS 5 is dominated by text menus and doesn’t benefit from any of the features associated with modern touch platforms, such as Android, iPhone or webOS.


  • Share

 

Readers Comments