One of the big complaints about the BlackBerry when compared to other smartphones is that a lot of the applications that run on the BlackBerry seem outdated and less sophisticated when compared those that run on devices like the iPhone and those running WebOS or Android.   To make a long story short, the complaints are fairly valid and much of the issue is because of the way that the BlackBerry utilizes memory.

Without getting too technical, BlackBerry devices, no matter how much memory they have, whether it be internal device memory or on removable memory cards, utilize a small fraction of of the memory available to them for running and storing applications.  The latest BlackBerrys use 256 MB of internal device memory in which they store all built in core applications as well as any add-on or third party applications.  This isn’t a problem so long as you want to run only a few BlackBerry apps that don’t take up a lot of space.

Pretty Graphics Take Up A Lot Of Space

There are games that you can buy for the iPhone  that take up as much space by themselves as the available application memory free space on many BlackBerry devices with no third party applications installed.  Because of the way BlackBerry devices handle memory, developers are handcuffed from creating applications with a lot of rich textures, extensive 3D graphics, recorded audio, and many of the “next gen” application features the consumers think BlackBerry apps lack.

How will RIM handle memory in the next BlackBerry OS?

We know that some newer BlackBerry devices now support 3D graphics acceleration.  Rumor has it that the next BlackBerry Browser will be the baddest WebKit browser available once released.  We’ve even heard the RIM is going to finally release a BlackBerry with a full touch screen and slide-out keyboard.  The question, however, that I have for RIM, is how are they going to address there memory problem?  If they don’t figure this out soon, all the other enhancements may be for not.