RIM previews BlackBerry OS 6

While Research in Motion got the party started early with the introduction of the RIM BlackBerry Pearl 3G and the BlackBerry Bold 9650, WES 2010 officially kicked off today with the keynote speech given by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

During the session, RIM gave a preview of its new BlackBerry 6 operating system. Though not due till Q3, the company highlighted a number of new and enhanced features. First and foremost in our minds is the new WebKit browser, which should allow for a faster and richer browsing experience and adds support for tabbed browsing.

BlackBerry OS 6 also features new graphics, animations, and transitions with contextual menu pop-ups. In addition, the home screen will allow for multiple views based on content type. A new media player interface and multitouch support are included as well. Interestingly, a lot of the enhancements seem to focus around a touch interface, so does that mean more touch-screen phones are in RIM's future?

You can check out some of the new features in RIM's video above. Hopefully, you won't find the background dancers as distracting as I did and can focus on the new features. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts below.

More stories from WES 2010:
BlackBerry App World 2.0