A rumour’s floating around that the speed of the built-in Maps application will be dummed down on Bell’s BlackBerry handsets in order to make their pay service better by comparison. It’s not entirely unheard of for carriers to favour their private $10/month service to what’s already built into the device for free (except maybe wireless traffic costs for map data). BlackBerry maps might end up taking 2-10 minutes to get a satellite lock instead of the usual 15-20 seconds. That’s quite the difference, and will probably turn a lot of people off from using location-based services altogether.
Firstly, I hope the rumor’s totally bunk. Second, I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t. Third, if it isn’t, the practice better not spread to other Canadian carriers. RIM’s done a fine job loading up fully-functional features, but if service providers are just going to intercept it, it’s undoing all of that good work. Similar worries have been raised over Android; if the system is really that easy to change, then carriers will lock it down and limit services in a way that’s ultimately profitable for them. Sure, good for business, but bad for PR.
[via Howard Forums]