If you look up the term ‘ecosystem’ in the Collins Dictionary (hint: It’s located a few pages after ‘BBM ™’ for BlackBerry ® Messenger), you will find it defined as:

“A system made up of a community of animals, plants, and bacteria interrelated together with its physical and chemical environment”

We hear this term used often regarding mobile devices, but instead of plants and animals, we talk about apps, media, customers, and developers. To further the analogy, the physical and chemical environments referred to in the definition are simply the BlackBerry ® Operating System (OS) and BlackBerry ® smartphones themselves.

Being strong in all of these areas builds a great mobile ecosystem. Right now, we are working to take the wonderful ecosystem we already have to BlackBerry® 10, and continue to grow it. How? By building an experience which doesn’t just rely on great devices or gobs of average apps, but one that supports developers, assists users, and brings killer apps. While making sure that all three interact well with the OS itself.

All this talk about animals and plants has me thinking that a few levels of Plants vs. Zombies are in order. What does a mobile “ecosystem” mean to you, and what parts do you feel it includes? Have your say in the comments below.

One thing that distinguishes the BlackBerry brand is our strong focus on enabling productivity and professionalism. With the way people work constantly evolving, the expectations of what collaboration tools should do are also continuously changing. At MWC, we have taken a look at a few aspects we think will be valuable for collaborating and what collaboration might look like in the world of tomorrow – effortless aesthetics and productive yet playful collaboration. Take a look at our MWC demos PitchRocket and Confetti to see further examples of what this could mean in practice.

PitchRocket concept demo

Many have a limited time to prepare for meetings and presentations, still we all know how an impressive presentation can really help someone who wants to pitch an idea or a concept. What if there was a way to create an astonishing presentation on the fly, even just a few minutes before a meeting starts? The concept demo PitchRocket shows what possibilities open up when combining the efficient text input of a handheld BlackBerry smartphone with the powerful graphics and high-resolution output of a BlackBerry® PlayBook™. Imagine writing simple text on your handheld device, and then instantly see it rendered as a beautiful, fluid and “living” presentation available on your PlayBook. The immediacy and combination of minimal input with maximized output is what we mean by “effortless aesthetics.”

Confetti concept demo

People bring PlayBook tablets to meetings and use them for presentations, note-taking and communicating. What if all these devices could be seamless joined into an extended work space linking all the screens? The Confetti demo shows what futuristic collaboration may look like on the BlackBerry platform. The tool enables sharing and presentation among participants, with a presence and direction-aware user interface as well as dynamic particle-like effects, allowing meeting participants to seamlessly collaborate in a productive yet playful way. Also, after seeing this demo, it’s clear that the PlayBook experience extends beyond the size of the device’s screen.

The BlackBerry 7.1 OS update will begin rolling out from carriers around the world beginning today and over the coming weeks, and offers some great new features that we wanted to highlight here:

• Mobile Hotspot: Turn your BlackBerry 7.1 OS device into a Wi-Fi® router anywhere, anytime! The new OS seamlessly provides Internet access for up to five Wi-Fi devices, including laptops and tablets.
• Universal Search: For this new release, we wanted to focus on the intelligence of our system and our apps – in other words, we wanted to create an intuitive experience that does the thinking for you. For example, Universal Search now has a new auto-suggest feature that that intelligently filters Bing® search results to offer you a variety of relevant Web sites based on your search terms.
• BlackBerry® Tag: Share contacts, media and files, and even invite friends to BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM) through a simple touch. BlackBerry Tag unlocks near field communication (NFC) capabilities for everyday use and makes sharing a lot faster and much more personal.
• Wi-Fi® Calling (where available): With BlackBerry 7.1 OS, you’ll be able to make Wi-Fi calls using your carrier’s Wi-Fi calling service (aka UMA-lite or GAN-lite). Wi-Fi calling allows you to save your talk time minutes and make phone calls over any Wi-Fi network. Not all carriers offer such a service so check with your carrier for availability.
• FM Radio: The BlackBerry 7.1 OS update will let BlackBerry® Curve™ 9360 and 9380 smartphone customers enjoy FM radio. The Curve models include a built-in FM radio so you can tune in to local FM radio stations. Simply plug in your headset to boost the reception (it acts as the antenna). Plus, no data usage or data plan required!
• BlackBerry® Maps:

When you launch the new BlackBerry Maps you’ll be able to discover special offers, coupons and discounts from nearby vendors – and, of course, you can act instantly by calling about the deal, finding the best route to get there, or grabbing the coupon code.

But that’s not all the surprises we have in store for you today – along with the new OS update, we’ve also released updates to a number of other popular BlackBerry smartphone apps! We’re continuously taking steps to enhance your social experiences on your BlackBerry smartphone. We are making the apps you know and love even more intelligent and intuitive with upgrades to help you manage your daily tasks or plan for your next big adventure.

Here’s what we’ve got for you:

BBM is now 6.1

It’s the BBM you know and love, taking your social experience to a whole new level. Now with BlackBerry Tag integration, you can invite a friend to BBM by simply tapping your NFC enabled BlackBerry smartphones against each other. Also, by popular request from our BBM community, we’ve added more ways to personalize your messages and your profile. BBM 6.1 is now out of beta, so check out our BBM 6.1 blog post for an in-depth look at the newest features.

BlackBerry Travel

Are you a frequent flier or avid traveler? The updated BlackBerry Travel app virtually plans your trips for you, from airport pick up and drop off to accommodations and scheduling. You’ll be able to find deals on hotel and car rental options, or arrange for limo service to and from an airport. Plus, you can rest easy knowing that the BlackBerry Travel app will quickly notify you if your flight is delayed or cancelled, and that it can help you find a new flight right away. No matter where you do your booking, the automatic trip scanning feature can pull your trip details into the app, so you don’t have to. See all your travel updates in one place as they happen, and don’t worry about double and triple checking your itinerary; if you’ve missed anything, BlackBerry Travel will let you know!

BlackBerry Traffic

Getting where you want to just got easier with the new update of BlackBerry Traffic. The updated app now provides you with turn-by-turn voice guidance so figuring out how to get there is easy and hands free. BlackBerry Traffic provides you with your route and your estimated time of arrival (ETA) based on current traffic conditions – right on your BlackBerry smartphone.

So as you can see, we’ve got a whole bundle of goodies ready for #TeamBlackBerry to enjoy. We’re confident that this collection of intelligent apps will help you connect with your fellow BlackBerry smartphone users, because life is better when it’s shared in real time.

For more information and to download the new versions of BBM, BlackBerry Traffic and BlackBerry Travel visit BlackBerry App World and don’t forget to leave us a comment and let us know what you think about BlackBerry 7.1 OS and the new app updates!

For those of you attending this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) come visit the BlackBerry booth (South Hall 3 Booth # 30326) to see these new updates and more firsthand!

In order to get the most out of your BlackBerry® smartphone experience, I highly recommend making sure your device software is up-to-date. In this post, I’ll be specifically talking about how to update the BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone, but the steps below can be used to upgrade other BlackBerry smartphones as well. Let’s get started!

Read more about how to upgrade at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog »

As you may have already seen in the sneak peek video, the Home Screen in BlackBerry® 6 has undergone a makeover. To get the inside scoop on some of these changes, I reached out to Joey Benedek, Director of UX Research at Research In Motion® (RIM). Check out the interview below.

First, can you tell us a bit about what you and your group do at RIM?

I am a Director in the User Experience (UX) group, and I run the UX Research team. The UX organization is responsible for understanding user needs and desires and translating those into interface designs. We then work with the various software development teams to iterate those designs – with end-user feedback as our guide – prior to releasing to market. Bottom line, our team is responsible for defining the on-device experience that our customers interact with and making sure those experiences are not only usable but also desirable.

If there was one thing you want our readers to know about the Home Screen redesign, what would it be?

I’d say that the redesign of the Home Screen in BlackBerry 6 is fresh, but familiar. When you look at it, it still looks like a BlackBerry Home Screen (for example, wallpaper selection continues to be a key attribute of the visual design), but it’s been updated – much like a home renovation still ‘feels’ like home, but is actually new.

With BlackBerry 6, we are introducing a host of new features in the design, evolving the look and feel and enabling the user to really customize the Home Screen. Overall, the visuals are cleaner and sleeker, and movement between and within the applications is more fluid, allowing users to navigate their BlackBerry smartphone in a much more intuitive and interactive way.

What is the biggest change in the Home Screen design?

In BlackBerry 6, there are now five separate views that a user can easily switch between using the Navigation Bar, depending on their preference and the type of information they’re looking for. These include: “Frequent”, where your most frequently-used apps are automatically placed for easy access; “Favorites”, where you can choose to add not just your favorite applications, but also to create shortcuts to particular Contacts or web pages (making the important people and information in your life just one click away!); “Media”, for all your media-centric content; “Downloads”, for all the apps you download; and “All” – this is the big vertical list that you can scroll through, similar to the Home Screen today. Users will be able to simply slide left and right (the touch-screen or trackpad, depending on your BlackBerry smartphone model) to quickly get to any of these new view panes.

Can you give us an overview of some of the other important BlackBerry 6 design updates?

In trying to deliver an optimized experience for how people use their BlackBerry smartphone – and how they search for information on it – we are introducing two new ‘quick access areas’ that are built into the Home Screen.

One is designed to allow you to have quick access to the Connections, Alarm and Options screens – things that we found people frequently want to adjust or change – with one click from the Home Screen. With BlackBerry 6, this will be done by simply selecting/tapping the top of the Home Screen. A drop-down panel then appears that allows you to change these on the spot.

The other quick access area on the Home Screen is designed to enable you to view your most recent messages (such as email, text, BlackBerry® Messenger), phone calls, upcoming appointments, Facebook® and Twitter® notifications simply by tapping the Notification Bar in the middle of the top of the Home Screen. If you click on the Notification Bar, it drops down to show who the notifications are from, along with the first few words from the title. This feature makes it much easier to prioritize which notifications you want to respond to first.

The BlackBerry Home Screen also now includes a powerful Universal Search application. It’s never been easier to find content on your BlackBerry smartphone, regardless of whether you’re looking for contacts, messages, music, pictures or appointments. Universal Search was designed to be tightly integrated with your BlackBerry smartphone: simply tap on the Search icon in the top right-hand corner of the Home Screen – or just start typing – and it searches the whole device. As you type, we instantly bring back your results using icons.

Maybe even more exciting is that the same search query can also be used to search the web as well. If you search your device and can’t find what you’re looking for, you can simply tap other available icons, such as YouTube®, Google or BlackBerry App World™, to extend your search further.

How did your team come up with the design and layout for the BlackBerry 6 Home Screen?

The Home Screen is really one of the most used areas of the BlackBerry smartphone, so we spent a lot of time researching how people access data and where they naturally would look for things. The research included focus groups, usability testing, gathering feedback from forums, customer feedback and much more.

For example, we found that users were overwhelmed by all the icons and details on the initial Home Screen, so we implemented the five views and swiping pane for easier viewing. We also found that it wasn’t always intuitive where to find newly downloaded applications, so we created the Downloads view on the Home Screen. Another great example was Universal Search – the team had users keep diaries of any searches they did in any domain over a few weeks, which helped us learn behavioral patterns, what order people want content coming back to them, and so on. This had a big influence on how the Universal Search application was designed.

If you had to pick your favorite new aspect of the Home Screen, what would it be?

It would have to be either the new Notification Dropdown (it’s great for multitasking) or swiping between application panes (I like watching the animation — it’s fun!).

In the almost ten years I’ve worked at Research In Motion (RIM), I’ve never been as excited about a BlackBerry® software launch as I am for BlackBerry 6, which is on track for release this summer. I’m absolutely in love with the BlackBerry 6 experience and I expect other longtime users like me will feel the same. I also think the wide range of changes and added features in BlackBerry 6 will attract a lot of new users to the BlackBerry platform.

I know I’m not the only one who is looking forward to BlackBerry 6. There was a lot of excitement about our first public sneak peek of BlackBerry 6 at WES 2010, and I’m happy to share a little more today through the new video posted above.

In addition to the new fluid user interface, the video illustrates a few of the new applications and features in BlackBerry 6 that are designed to provide users with a mobile experience that is fun and approachable, yet extremely powerful. We’ll discuss these features in more detail on Inside BlackBerry as we move closer to the point when BlackBerry 6 becomes publicly available.

Of course, we would love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment and let us know which aspect of BlackBerry 6 grabs your attention the most. Is it the new user interface with a redesigned home screen, universal search and context-sensitive pop-up menus? Is it the revamped BlackBerry Browser powered by WebKit? Or is it new applications like Social Feeds, which integrates your news and social networks into one destination? Personally, those are all high on my list and I also love the fact I can add my wife as a contact on the home screen for quick access. I look forward to reading your responses!

Andrew Bocking, VP of Handheld Software Product Management

We’re super excited to be able to share the above video – shared during the WES 2010 Tuesday General Session Keynote. Post a comment and tell us what you think about BlackBerry 6.