BlackBerry OS 5 has been floating around the interwebs for some time now and we know that when it is finally officially released, it isn’t going to be the major overhaul to the BlackBerry operating system that we once hoped it would be.   On one hand you can say that the BlackBerry is holding it’s own against the likes of the iPhone’s OS and Web OS found on the Palm Pre, however, I don’t know that the BlackBerry OS  is in a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ type of situation when compared to it’s competitors.

If you leave out the BlackBerry Storm and BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry devices and the operating systems that run on them, are generally seen as the model for for stability and reliability.  You used to hear people say that the BlackBerry doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of it’s competitors but they just always seem to work.  There is a lot to be said for stability and reliability in the corporate world, a realm in which the BlackBerry reigns supreme, however, the desires of consumers, the new battleground on which the  smartphone war is being waged, differ just a bit.

Not to say that consumers don’t want stable devices.  It sucks for anyone when you are trying to make a call and your phone reboots on your, however, consumers seem to be bit more forgiving when it comes to the occasional reboot, especially when they have thousands of really cool applications to help them pass time by when their devices are running, even if they can only run said applications one at a time.

I personally think that the BlackBerry OS has these other mobile operating systems on usability, however, even being the big BlackBerry fan that I am, believe the iPhone wins on the coolness factor hands down.  The Pre and its Web OS tries to bridge usability and cool factor, and, quite honestly, does a bang out job at their first go at it.  There are a few bugs and far too few applications, however, you get a good feel for what Palm is trying to do with the Pre and can see where the future of mobile devices is going.

Is the BlackBerry due for a major OS overhaul?  I think that it is…

The question that I want to toss out is can Palm actually sell enough Pres to truly contend with the likes of the BlackBerry, the iPhone, and even Adroid and, dare I say, Windows Mobile devices.

50,000 Palm Pres shipped the weekend it came out and 150,000 have been sold to date.  Comparatively speaking, 50,000 iPhones probably went in the first few minutes that the 3G S was available and I am sure that Apple hit 150,000 iPhones sold well before lunch on the first day it was available.

I was talking to a friend about the Pre and they said,  “You can’t really expect Palm to compete with the likes of the the iPhone or the BlackBerry”.  I said that I guess not if Palm can only sell 5% of what Apple sells.  To be fair, RIM won’t sell a million new BlackBerrys in a single weekend either, however, when you add up all of the BlackBerry Bold BlackBerry Curve 8900,  BlackBerry Pearl Flip, and BlackBerry Tour devices that are sold on all of the carriers over the couse of the quarter, they will rival Apple if not come out on top in gross unit sales.  The same cannot be said for Palm.

I hope that the Pre turns things around enough at Palm for them to be able to effectively come out with other WebOS based devices.  The better Palm does, the more innovative RIM needs to be to stem market share from bleeding their way…

Pretty much ever since the day that the first iPhone was announced we’ve seen blog posts, news and magazine articles, and television reports questioning whether the BlackBerry would be able to survive once the Apple machine got wheels rolling.  I think it is safe to say that Research in Motion and the BlackBerry have fared pretty well and have even exceed expectations.

I, however, want to ask a question from the other side of things.  Should Apple be concerned about RIM? With the onslaught of multiple new BlackBerry devices on pretty much every carrier of consequence over a relatively short period of time, I say that Apple should be…

I don’t know…  Maybe it is just me, but, I was expecting more from the iPhone 3G S.  Is a better camera and MMS enough to make you replace the 3G you bought just last year?  Has anything been added to the 3G S that will make that BlackBerry user that was holding out say “Now I am ready to get an iPhone”?

Personally I think that the Palm Pre will cause more trouble for RIM than the iPhone 3G S, but, that is for another post.  I do believe, however, that the price drop on the iPhone 3G means that we will see a ‘ginormous’ number of iPhones sold this summer and that is probably a bigger problem for RIM than the technology in the iPhone 3G S.

It looks like Palm still hasn’t figured the hardware thing out yet.

I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself…  I am actually pulling for Palm.

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Word on the street is that the BlackBerry Storm 2 may launch a lot sooner than we thought it was.  Beleive it or not, the Storm 2 could come out as early as the end of this month and, according to BlackBerryOS forum moderator BlackBerry OS, who BGR vouches for, will come out by the end of June at the latest.

I just received an e-mail from an ‘insider’ who works for Verizon over in their offices located down the street. This person works on a senior level and has been right in the past with her information. She mentioned that Verizon has been training their tech support all last week and this week for the Storm 2. They have been told to be ready to support this by the end of this month. Could this mean the Storm 2 will be out by the end of this month? She could not confirm the day of the release but she did say it will be out soon. The end of next month the latest. She also did mention that the Storm 2 WILL have WiFi. She will be e-mailing me documentation with in the week and once I receive them, you will be the 2nd to see them.

Could we see a BlackBerry Storm 2 and a BlackBerry Tour launch around the same time?  It will be an interesting start to the summer to say the least.

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I know that I’ve been outspoken about Verizon dragging their feet on making any of the leaked updates available officially, however, if I am honest, I can understand why they haven’t.

To make a long story short, when something sucks and you make it marginally better, it pretty much still sucks, and, in the same light, when something is OK and you make it marginally better, it is still just OK.  This latter is the case with just about every BlackBerry Storm update since 4.7.0.75.

Not many would argue that the original OS that shipped on the BlackBerry Storm when it launched was a nightmare.  It was riddle with so many bugs that the Storm was practically unusable.  The first update, 4.7.0.75, actually gave the Storm an OS that was OK.  When you move from an OS that sucks, 4.7.0.65, to an OS that is OK, 4.7.0.75, your end users will perceive a benefit and think that 100 meg download was worth it.

When, however, you supply your end users that have an OK operating system with a 100 meg update that is OK plus 1 minus a fair amount of battery life, you may actually do more harm than good.

Chances are that you’ve already heard about BlackBerry App World, however, in case you haven’t, it is supposed to be something like, and I use the term “like” loosely, Apple’s App Store.

App World is definitely not a one-stop shop for all all the BlackBerry applications you could ever want on your device and, quite honestly, I don’t know that it ever will be, however, here are, in my opinion, 5 things that could immediately improve BlackBerry App World and make it a bit more useful.

1. Create A Tag For All Free BlackBerry Applications — I know that the purpose of App World is for Developers and RIM to be able to sell BlackBerry Applications, however, free apps will be downloaded overwhelming more so than paid apps and not give users a way to quickly and easily search for free apps is annoying.
2. Offer $0.99 Downloads — Charging 300% 3x as much for your cheapest downloads than the App Store, which you are trying to emulate, was simply a brilliant idea…  Not!
3. Make App World Accessible To Desktop Browsers –  Let me buy on my computer and send a link to open up the OTA download to my BlackBerry.
4. Improve App World’s Search — It is truly quite bad…
5. Provide Exclusive Titles — Offer a few BlackBerry Applications, that you can get only on App World.

I can certainly think of more than 5 things that would immediately make BlackBerry App World better, however, I figure that I will leave that for the comments.

If you don’t already have App World installed on your BlackBerry, point your devices BlackBerry Browser to http://www.blackberry.com/appworld to get it.

Why hasn’t Verizon updated the BlackBerry Storm, undoubtedly the most buggy BlackBerry device ever, since a week or so after they first launched the device back in the fall last year?  There have been well over a dozen “leaked updates”  most of which have significantly improved performance and user experience since the Storm debuted but Verizon has forced their users to “officially” use BlackBerry Storm OS 4.7.0.75 for much too long.

The leaked OS updates are now up to 4.7.0.113, which is rumored to be the next official update, but other carriers have already officially updated their devices to 4.7.o.122.  I wouldn’t have expected Verizon to release every leak that has come out officially, however, one or two more than what they have released would have had a lot of BlackBerry Storm users feeling better about the device than what they currently do.