RIM has always had problems with WiFi on a BlackBerry device. When comparing a BlackBerry to the iPhone on WiFi, the iPhone makes the BlackBerry look slow and jittery. RIM recognizes that there are a lot of improvements to be made with the pan and zoom functionality on the browser, and says the issue lies on-device, and has nothing to do with the NOC.
There are 2 issues at play here:
First, the on-device RAM needs to be improved in order for pages to load faster and for the device to have a better browsing experience.
Second, the BlackBerry is too conservative with power management. RIM puts the WiFi radio to sleep too quickly in order to preserve battery life, and this affects the WiFi browsing experience.
In recent videos posted by Salomondrin, we see the the Bold 9700 browser experience on WiFi compared with 3G. While it’s not obvious if the reviewer had all the necessary criteria for a proper comparison, the two devices load at approximately the same speed. WiFi should be much faster than 3G and if they are loading at approximately the same rate, this suggests that the issues may not have been fixed on upcoming devices.
If this is not the case, RIM needs to get these videos ripped from the Internet asap. Personally, I’m expecting the WiFi issues to be resolved with the Bold 9700 and the Storm 2, rather than have to wait for the next generation of devices.
When comparing the Bold 9700 and the Storm 2 on WiFi, the Bold 9700 actually does really well. Scrolling through a page doesn’t produce the same jitters as previous devices do. This is leaving me to believe that RIM has made some advancements in making the device better on WiFi.
So I’ll leave the question to the readers.
You have seen both videos, do you think the WiFi browsing issues have been resolved?
