In what may be the slimmest feature upgrade ever, Research In Motion unleashed their BIS (BlackBerry Internet Service) version 2.6 update this weekend. BIS is the email delivery mechanism that integrates up to 10 personal email addresses so email is pushed to a BlackBerry smartphone. Strangely most of the enhancements have been made to Gmail integration (Android competition?). In order to get the features you’ll need to make the stupid clumsy move of removing and adding any Gmail accounts.
Here’s what I found is new related to Gmail:
- When you read a Gmail email on your BlackBerry – the web client knows that it has been read and marks it accordingly
- Emails sent from your BlackBerry no longer wind up in your inbox
- The ability to change your email account signature from the device was rumored to be an enhancement but is NOT present
- Setup of Google Apps for Domain emails (ie – Mail that Google hosts on their domain) is not automatic any longer – and requires that you manually insert the imap.gmail.com mail server name
- RIM still doesn’t understand that deleting an email in Gmail (for most of us) means we want it sent to our “All” folder and not “Trash”
