RIM Demos BlackBerry 6

Today at its Wireless Enterprise Symposium event, Research In Motion gave a sneak peak at its new operating system. BlackBerry 6, as it is called, looks like a solid improvement on BlackBerry's existing strengths, bringing a better, more graphic experience to end users.Based on the video that RIM showed to keynote attendees, the new user interface looks sharp. Some of the most notable improvements include a refreshed home screen with drastically improved notifications. The new notifications shows clearly new emails, missed calls/voicemails, and upcoming calendar entries. The email application has also been refreshed and looks like it includes much better multimedia support, such as embedded photos.

The multimedia applications have been overhauled from the ground up. The music player has richer icons and graphics, and looks like it will be much better to interact with. The photo gallery app has similarly been re-realized.

The demonstration showed how a call comes in and allows user to seamlessly switch from other tasks to accepting the call and returning to those tasks. Speaking of tasks, the demo shows what looks to be a task switcher of sorts, which should let users move more easily from app to app and task to task.

The user interface has obviously been built to support touch devices. The on-screen software QWERTY keyboard looks different from what's available on the Storm/Storm2. RIM also showed how its SMS/MMS app has been refreshed, giving threaded conversations a much more appealing look.

Here is a video of the new operating system in action: