If you had been watching various BlackBerry news releases yesterday, you would have seen that the BlackBerry 8700 series devices are pretty horrible when it comes to video playback. They can do it, but, pail in comparison to oh, lets say, about everything else.

Well, according to the BlackBerry maker co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, Research in Motion meant for it to be that way…

In response to questioning over the BlackBerry’s poor video performance, Lazaridis said that the Intel processor in the 8700 had always boasted extensive “onboard acceleration” features, but that RIM “never enabled it” in order to ensure maximum “stability and reliability”.

The next version of the BlackBerry firmware, v4.2, will enable these dormant hardware features on future and existing Intel-based BlackBerry devices (currently the is the only Intel-based BlackBerry), Lazaridis said. Once enabled, hardware acceleration could improve audio/video performance dramatically.

My question is if you purposely cripple processor performance because you want to ensure maximum “stability and reliability”, how can it be OK to enable it after consumers voice how much it sucks that you didn’t enable it in the first place?

Is stability and reliability no longer important?