Another ground breaking mobile device release, another embarrassing leak. Mobile device maker Research in Motion found itself responding to the publication of documentation for its much anticipated Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) 4.0 on Thursday.
In a story reminiscent of the now famous faux pas in which Apple Software Engineer, Gary Powell left what was then the Prototype of the iPhone 4 at a bar in Redwood City, California, the Web site NB44.com reported on Thursday that a version of the BIS 4.0 feature guide had been published online. The user documentation provides a roadmap to the as-yet unreleased new version of the popular smart phone.
Unlike the iPhone 4, however, the changes in the latest Blackberry seem to be more nipping and tucking than radical surgery. According to a report from ZDnet, there are five significant features. The most significant is integration with Blackberry ID, a cloud based universal authentication service which will create a single sign-in solution for accessing email and preferences, and simplify the process of switching or upgrading devices by making the manual back-up process obsolete. There will also be an improvement BIS user communication service. Any official messages being sent to users from here out will incorporate Black berry’s brand logo. In addition, Blackberry will be upgrading the automatic login mechanism, changing the user interface to better accommodate email integration and security settings, and also improving Google Calendar’s synchronization processes to better communicate whether a user is free or busy.
Research In Motion is targeting non-enterprise users with the new phone. The firm, an early leader in the smart phone market and still one of the largest suppliers of corporate phones, has been losing marketshare to Apple Inc.’s iPhones and phones by a variety of platform vendors running the Android OS from Google, according to the most recent data from ComScore.
