BlackBerry 6, RIM’s big bet to catch up to iPhone and Android in the smartphone software stakes, has just been shown off in an official video. Set to a Black Eyes Peas soundtrack, it’s one cheesy affair, but in between the clips of all the young professional types busting a move, there’s some gold to be gleamed about just what to expect. We’ve gathered together six nuggets you may not spot about BlackBerry 6, so read on for the list and the video.
BlackBerry Pearl 3G: Everything you need to know. Click here!
Podcast support is built in
It’s hardly a revolutionary new feature, but a Podcasts icon can be seen in the media folder in BlackBerry 6, alongside video, images, music and YouTube. That’s great news for BlackBerry addicts who currently have to pay for an app such as PodTrapper to get the same sort of iTunes and podcast experience as iPhone users.
Pinch to zoom
It’s not confirmed, but 54 seconds in you can see the gyrating suit swipe with two hands to zoom in on a photo. We’ve yet to try a zooming option for swooping in and out of touchscreen photos and websites that’s preferable to the pinch to zoom multitouch gesture pioneered by the iPhone (The Nokia N900‘s one finger rotating zoom was just weird). BlackBerry 6 goes a step further by providing an icon showing you have much of the image is in view at one time.
YouTube music integration
In a move slightly similar to the Mediascape app on the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, BlackBerry 6 will pull up related YouTube videos of artists you have stored on your phone for you. Skip to 0:23 in the BlackBerry 6 video and you can see the option spring up as someone searches for will.i.am (Shudder). It’s potentially a great way to find more songs by singers and groups you like.
BlackBerry 6 dated!
Universal search
BlackBerry OS already has a fairly comprehensive search option, but it’s slow, and doesn’t jump online beyond your messages to pull up the info you want. BlackBerry 6 though will let you type in a word or phrase, whittling down emails, apps and calendar events, all the while providing a browser icon to instantly Google for it too.
Tabbed browsing
Yes. We had to pinch ourselves when we saw this. The atrocious, single page web browser has been the bane of BlackBerry OS for years, but BlackBerry 6 finally lets you open multiple pages on the go on the upcoming, revamped WebKit browser. It appears to be triggered by the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen (Skip to 1:46 to see it), and drops down a row of page tiles – clearly BlackBerry 6 will allow for at least four pages open at once, which is already a 300 percent improvement on the current situation.
Social feeds
BlackBerry OS already boasts one of the best, most tightly integrated mobile Facebook apps around, but by and large, Twitter BlackBerry apps (Even RIM’s own) are poor, and battery gannets. BlackBerry 6 could do away with them with social feeds, showing you streams of your friends’ Facebook and Twitter updates all in one pane, with the option to filter between them. It’s not clear if other social networks can be added too, but we don’t see the point in a filter button if not. The BlackBerry 6 video also reveals that tapping a friends name in this view brings up a visual list of ways to message them, similar to the pop up contact bar in Android 2.0
