RIM switching to open source WebKit

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Research In Motion announced an overhaul of its Blackberry phone web browser. Like the iPhone and Android systems, the new browser is WebKit based and is expected to be available on Blackberry devices later this year. in interviews Mike Lazardis, co-CEO of RIM said "You'll see how quickly it downloads, how quickly it renders and how smooth it scrolls and zooms in".

RIM emphasise "Full HTML5 Support" as a feature of the new browser, which already scores 100/100 on the Acid3 test. RIM acquired Torch Mobile, developers of a WebKit based mobile browser for Windows Mobile, in August 2009 and has been working on the new browser since then. A video on YouTube shows the browser rendering Amazon's web site and performing the Acid3 test.

WebKit is an open sources layout engine which handles the rendering of web pages, originally derived from the KDE project's KHTML library. Apple developers forked the code and created WebKit to power Apple's Safari browser as found on Mac OS X, Windows, the iPhone and the soon to be released, iPad. WebKit, with its LGPL licensed core and BSD licensed supporting components, has been incorporated into Google's Chrome browser and Android operating system.

(djwm)