Yesterday I reminded everyone that RIM would be upgrading BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) from version 2.8 to 3.0 for North America. The update was completed this morning and includes the following new features and enhancements:

• Coming soon: Enhancements to Google Mail integrations
  • Google Mail Account to BlackBerry smartphone synchronization of read, unread and sent email message status for new Google Mail integrations
    • Note: this feature will be added throughout the Spring 2010 by region
• Enhancements to the Google Mail Plug-in
  • Create and delete labels from the BlackBerry smartphone
    • Note: The Google Mail Plug-in requires BlackBerry® Device Software 4.5 or later and a Google Mail integration, using Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), within BlackBerry Internet Service.
• Additional Language Support for Basque, Catalan, Galician, Romanian
• Increased Attachment Compatibility
  • OpenDocument Presentations (.odp)
  • OpenDocument Spreadsheets (.ods)
  • OpenDocument Text (.odt)
  • OpenDocument Text Templates (.ott)
  • Windows Media Audio (.wma)
• Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (xHTML) Support for non Thick Clients
  • BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0 is designed to support xHTML for non Thick Clients, providing BlackBerry smartphone users with a richer user experience, allowing for buttons, additional fonts, and colour controls when subscribers access and toggle their user settings.
• Device Switch Revalidation
  • Changes to optimize the email setup and deactivation experience when the subscriber switches BlackBerry smartphones or Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards.
• Hosted Email Address Passwords
  • Allows BlackBerry smartphone users to re-claim the BlackBerry email address if their BlackBerry Internet Service account is ever deleted.
    • Note: After BlackBerry Internet Service 3.0, only newly created BlackBerry email “Username/Password” accounts will be prompted to create a password, secret question, and secret answer. For information on how to create a BlackBerry email address, see KB04553.
• Send Delivery Receipts
  • BlackBerry Internet Service users now have the ability to configure whether to allow sending delivery receipts or not. For more information, see KB12835.

You might have experienced a temporary blackout during the update but everything should be back up and running. Let me know what you think about BIS 3.0 and if the update went smoothly for you in the comments!

via KB20613