I e-mailed the local PR agency of RIM here in the Philippines and asked a few questions about the upcoming BlackBerry 6 Operating System, the BlackBerry Bold 9800, and some telco-related queries. They replied pretty quickly but focused mostly on my question on why they’re going with the WebKit browser and what difference will it make for their users. To summarize, RIM believes that the WebKit browser will result to a richer, faster, and more complete browsing experience. It will also be a better platform for developers to make widgets and applications which hopefully means we’ll get more apps. Here’s a video of the browser being demonstrated:

Read the complete answer of RIM after the break.

We’ve adapted WebKit to take advantage of the incredible efficiency of the BlackBerry platform. With the new browser, pages load quickly and dynamic markup like Javascript and AJAX are fast and responsive. With improved panning and zooming it creates a seamless end user experience. The video showcases how the new browser delivers the web with full fidelity on your BlackBerry smartphone. All of this comes with full standards interoperability as shown by the 100/100 score on the ACID3 test.

Some of the upcoming capabilities that will be supported by the new browser include:

HTML 5
CSS3
DOM L3

Not only will the new browser support all of these web technologies but it will also support two Widget standards – BlackBerry Widgets and JIL Widgets.

This substantial step forward with WebKit and our platform efficiency will enable content developers to create robust applications for both the Web and Widget development models. This browser will deliver a compelling and powerful application experience for users.

Regarding the BlackBerry 9800 and my other questions, RIM said that they don’t have any comment yet. The PR Firm handling them explained to me that RIM is a bit reserved about talking about products that aren’t officially in the market yet which is understandable.

Thanks again to RIM and Virtusio for answering!