I’ve never quite understood why Nokia’s Symbian gets so much flack for having an outdated UI while BlackBerry is let off the hook. In my book, RIM’s OS is equally old fashioned and despite years of maturity still looks a bit, well, unfinished in parts, with text hard aligned on certain setting screens and a kludge of drop down menus at times. But that’s set to change with the upcoming Blackberry 6, which got a tasty preview on video today.

What’s shown seems very consumer-focused too as the company continues to break out from its core base of corporate users and build on the success of BlackBerry Messenger amongst teenagers and other non-suits, as well as Facebook integration and a slew of consumer apps.

One thing I like about BlackBerry 6 is the heavy use of alerts on the homescreen making for a very efficient way to track new emails, SMS, status updates and the like.  There’s a completely revamped web browser and a cool looking ‘Social Feeds’ app. The new UI also looks like it’s been optimized for touch in a more intuitive way than Symbian 5th edition, for example. Just sayin’

Video after the jump…

BlackBerry