With the launch of the Blackberry 6 weeks away, Blackberry look into the six top new features that will power the company’s smartphones and make it a more formidable rival to the iPhone and Android devices.
Music Album Art and Discovery
The minute you’ve loaded your music library to your BlackBerry smartphone via BlackBerry Media Sync, you’ll notice that the company has added album art virtually everywhere for instant and easy recognition of your favorite albums.
You will be able to navigate your music by using the interactive carousel to swipe through the album art. You will also quickly find other selections from the same album/artist by selecting the album or artist name for the song currently playing!
Organize Your Photos
With BlackBerry 6, Blackberry has also provided multiple ways to view and organise your photos, so thousands of photos can be arranged intuitively. For example, photos will be able to be grouped by event or by date.
You will be able to view the full picture or a slide show of pictures with transitions. BlackBerry smartphones with touch support are designed to zoom in on an area of interest with the “Pinch to Zoom” feature. The software will also allow you to select groups of pictures to share, copy, paste or delete.
Streaming, Sharing and Searching for Videos
Searching through videos on your BlackBerry has been made easier in BlackBerry 6 with the new thumbnail view. There will also be more ways to view videos in BlackBerry 6. You will be able to opt to play video in various sizes (Original, Fit to Screen, Full Screen), plus instantly share your videos with the world using the new integrated YouTube video uploader.
If you want to watch some online videos then the new universal search feature in BlackBerry 6 has been designed to enable you to search Internet video sites such as YouTube, and to enjoy higher quality YouTube videos when using Wi-Fi.
New Camera Controls and Supported Scene Modes
With BlackBerry 6, Blackberry focused on perfecting the point and shoot experience. Users can capture photos quicker and better than ever before with a variety of new features in BlackBerry 6. New onscreen controls means there is no need to hunt through menus for your favorite options.
You will be able to access and review camera pictures, set popular options and pick from a variety of scene modes, all directly from the camera screen. You will also be able to capture video using the video camera application on the device.
New Podcasts App!
With the BlackBerry podcasts service, users will be able to search, subscribe and play audio and video podcasts directly from their BlackBerry smartphone.
This service will be preloaded with BlackBerry 6 in North America and is completely mobile (so no PC required) – and all of the content is available for free!
Finding New Multimedia Content and Apps
If you have not yet loaded any multimedia content onto your BlackBerry smartphone or are looking for something new, no problem. Select “Explore Music Apps”, “Explore Video Apps” or “Explore Picture Apps” from the main menu screen within the media player, and you will be provided with a direct link to quickly discover popular media apps from each of those categories from the BlackBerry App World storefront.
BlackBerry Desktop Software and Media Sync
On top of continued support of iTunes & Windows Media Player music sync and two-way photo sync, BlackBerry 6 has been designed to enable you to sync videos to and from your BlackBerry smartphone (BlackBerry to PC, or PC to BlackBerry).
Plus there are now greater music sync options: in addition to playlists, users will have more flexibility and will also be able to sync by individual artists or genres.