A Closer Look at BlackBerry 6's New WebKit Browser

The latest version of Research In Motion's BlackBerry mobile operating system became official a few days ago and, along with it, came a ...

The latest version of Research In Motion's BlackBerry mobile operating system became official a few days ago and, along with it, came a new BlackBerry browser, one that reportedly offers far more performance than its previous flavors did. According to the leading smartphone designer, the new solution should offer a greatly enhanced user experience, at least this is what the development team behind the browser says. “At the core of the new BlackBerry Browser is the WebKit rendering engine. WebKit is a high quality open source rendering engine, which is used in many desktop and mobile web browsers. Our Browser development team not only has the WebKit expertise of Torch Mobile (a leading contributor in the WebKit community), but also years of RIM mobile expertise to help ensure that the WebKit engine is optimized for mobile,” a recent post on the BlackBerry Developer's blog notes. One of the main features of the new browser is the support for new web standards, including HTML5, although the current version of the app is not totally compliant with this standard. According to the team, the new BlackBerry Browser was designed to offer great HTML rendering speed improvements, as well as better JavaScript execution. Moreover, the solution comes with a new UI, which includes a redesigned start page, tabbed browsing, pinch to zoom, unified URL and search entry box, and more. The development team brought the UI of the browser in line with BlackBerry 6 UI's, while making sure that users would be able to access the desired content fast and easy. All in all, the main focus was on providing users with an enhanced experience while browsing the Internet, it seems. “We are the only platform that uses WebKit while also reducing the data consumed to render most sites significantly. BlackBerry 6 is designed to allow users to access desktop and premium mobile web content while using significantly less data, making it easier for them to stay within the confines of their service plans. This is also great news for developers, because the BlackBerry platform will not compromise your web content while reducing data consumption for consumers,” the said blog post continues.