RIM Rolling Out BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0 [BIS 3.0 Offers WMA, OpenOffice Support, Enhanced Gmail Experience, Total BlackBerry Outage For Four Hours Coming]

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Research In Motion (RIM) will be unveiling version 3.0 of their BlackBerry Internet Service product which provides BlackBerry e-mail and internet to customers without an enterprise e-mail server. BIS 3.0 will be adding a few coveted features that the BlackBerry faithful have been asking for a while now.

The thing that has gotten the BlackBerry community most excited about the update is the new Gmail functionality. Users will now be able to create and delete labels for their Gmail account from their BlackBerry smartphones, whereas before they would have to log in from a regular computer to do so. BIS 3.0 is also adding “two-way synchronization” for Gmail accounts, letting users mark read and unread e-mails from both their Gmail account and BlackBerry phone.

BIS 3.0 will also have improved attachment compatibility for OpenOffice file formats (Presentations, Spreadsheets, Text) as well as for the WMA audio format. BIS 3.0 also adds support for xHTML on its web browsing, giving users what RIM calls “a richer web experience”. Changes have also been made in the process for switching SIM cards or BlackBerry phones for users.

The BlackBerry Community was screaming for Gmail label creation/delete and the last official word from RIM was that it would be coming via an update to the official Gmail BlackBerry plug-in, but now, it’s being added in the official update to the net service.

The BIS 3.0 update is being rolled out in North America, early in the morning on Sunday, March 28th. It will affect 100% of North American users whose phone isn’t tied into an enterprise server. Affected users will face a total outage in terms of both internet and e-mail service. The benefits are worth it, though.

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