The performance of a smartphone is depending on the capability of its operating system. To gain a great performance, Research In Motion (RIM) produced the BlackBerry OS as the default operating system for the series of BB smartphone. It is a closed source or proprietary operating system that does not allow other developers to get involved in the OS research and development.
The first RIM’s product to use the BlackBerry OS is the 580 pager model. The device used the original version of this OS namely 1.0 version in January, 1999. Since its initial release, it was known for the capability sending and receiving email via push mail feature, the phone and messaging capability, supports for internet faxing and web browsing, supports for viewing Office files, and the capability of supporting other wireless data services.
The BlackBerry OS supports for multitasking since it is capable of running more than one application at once. For the illustration, users can open the contacts and calendar application at the same time when they are making phone call. These applications run in the background while performing current task. Consequently, the more applications that are running, the more memories are used by the device.
Other excellent feature of this OS is the push e-mail capability. This is the application that made BB smartphone to become well-known in the market. Amazingly, this feature automatically pushes all new emails, contact lists, and schedule information (calendar) altogether into the device. With the push e-mail, all incoming e-mails can be directly forwarded to the phone. E-mail also has been compressed and scanned on Blackberry server so it is free of viruses. An e-mail with the size of 1 MB when received via push e-mail can be compressed to 10 kb without changing or corrupting its content. This feature also allows user to open the attachment files such as the Microsoft office or PDF documents easily.
The latest stable release of BlackBerry OS is the 7.0 version. RIM was officially released this OS in August 2011. The recent models that have been using this software include the Bold 9900/9930, the Torch 9810/9850/9860 and the Curve 9350/9360/9370. Unfortunately, the company claimed that the older device would not be upgraded to this latest OS version. The company also released the tablet OS version that has been used by the PlayBook tablet.
For your information, this is the way to check the version of BlackBerry OS in the device. First, go to the Home screen and then go to the Options menu. Choose the ‘About’ on the ‘Device Options’ screen and then there are the descriptions of model number and the OS version underneath it.
In general, the BlackBerry OS is one the sophisticated software platform that comes with great and highly functional features for contact management, calendaring, and e-mail clients. However, the performance of web browsing is still at below average and also the BB applications are far more expensive compared to the iPhone and Android. [IS]
