Cynthia Cheng Mintz
I recently upgraded my BlackBerry’s operating system to OS 6, which is used on all of the new devices. My BlackBerry is over a year old and ran on OS 5 until last Thursday. While I was happy with OS 5, I was curious to see what I could get out of OS 6. Rogers, my carrier, had just made OS 6 available, so I downloaded it. While I really like the new interface (love the tray!), I thought it was a big mistake at first. Not only are there fewer and different default ringtone options and themes, once it was in operation, my memory was down to 10 MB. Yes, you read correctly TEN MEGABYTES. I was running on 80-something MB when I was on OS 5. I then did what every experienced BlackBerry owner did – a battery pull. That brought my memory up to about 20-30 MB. I was frustrated and was ready to downgrade back to OS 5, but not before I tried to find other solutions.
The “short menu” screen on OS 6 as seen using UberSocial
This seemed to be a problem with just about everyone who upgraded so there were lots of tips available online – most of which suggested that I back up my device, unselect some of the categories for universal search and do a complete wipe. I did that, along with deleting several apps that I did not use very much, including my WordPress for BlackBerry (it’s next to impossible to blog on that thing anyway. Better wait for a tablet of some sort) and SocialScope (this takes up about 2 MB. I’ve replaced it with HootSuite for BlackBerry. Just wished it would automatically fill in Twitter IDs and hash tags) followed by another battery pull. Memory increased to 50-something MB and holding steady.
I’m still struggling as to whether I should downgrade back to OS 5. I have about a year and a half into this contract, with another 18 months to go (Canadian phone contracts are three years). I guess hovering at 52 MB isn’t too bad if I don’t download any more apps on my phone (I pretty much plan to use my phone for calls and social media purposes only. Games, newspaper and magazine apps can be saved for tablets). I do like OS 6 in that it better organizes your files – your images, for example, are separated into Camera Pictures (images taken by your phone), Picture Library (images saved on your device) as well as BlackBerry Messenger (images sent to you via BBM). A short cut to picture-related apps in App World is available as well. There is also a new interface for the “short” menu which pops up when one presses the track pad which in the case of say, Twitter, allows one to add images or shrink Tweets. With email, you get to either save or send. In both cases, there is also the option of seeing the entire menu, which pops up from the bottom left hand corner as it did in older models.
What do you think? Have you had problems with the OS 6 upgrade? What do you like/dislike about OS 6?
