Artful Code

I have been using Blackberry OS 6 on my Bold 9650 (pre-installed) for a few weeks. I love some of the new functionality, especially search and the new context menus. Search works very similarly to Spotlight on OSX. The new context menus do a good job of splitting common contextual options out of the BB menu. I also like the quicker boot time.

It feels pretty top heavy, though. I think they tried to bolt the QNX UI on top of BB OS, but without the power and efficiency underneath the hood to make it perform adequately on my handset. The 9650 seems high end for OS 5 but low end for OS 6. Some of the rendering, smooth scrolling, and transparency effects really bog down the system, at least on the 9650’s hardware.

The only other real problem I have with it is that it is missing a feature I really like from OS 5 – the ability to send a picture via MMS directly from the browser.

For a while, I used an OS 5 theme which eliminated many of the more expensive UI elements, like app tabs, but at some point I lost the ability to use themes, even after a clean install.

So for now, I’m back to OS 5, and my phone is much snappier again. Oh well. Better to be a big fish in a little pond, I suppose.