Verizon BlackBerry owners, your wait for OS 6 on the Curve 3G 9330 and Bold 9650 is at an end. At 8 PM EST tonight, RIM and Big Red are rolling it out to everybody.
The biggest addition in the OS is universal search, which lets you pull up local content, like contacts and e-mails, as well as web content, like Google or YouTube searches, just by typing from the home screen. There’s also the new WebKit browser that renders web sites a little more cleanly than before. The overall look is tidied up, with reorganized options menus, and a new categorized home screen which separates apps into Media, Favourites, and a bunch of others. Take a look at my full tour of OS 6 for a closer look.
Folks on GSM networks have already had updates made available to them for the Bold 9700 and Curve 3G 9300, but there’s still nothing for the Pearl 3G 9100. I imagine its unique screen size will require a bit more work, but at least RIM can get on that upgrade unperturbed by the other BlackBerry’s nagging for an upgrade. Just around the corner we have OS 6.1, which will bring augmented reality and NFC to the handsets that have supporting hardware, and a few home screen refinements plus greater QR barcode reading to those that don’t.
If you’re a Verizon customer with a Curve 3G or Bold, head on over to Options, Advanced Options, and Wireless Upgrade sometime later tonight or tomorrow to get your update over the air, and if it’s not working, you can sideload it through the Desktop Software by downloading from either one of Verizon’s update sites.