OS 4.5 has finally come out for GSM blackberries. I was about to toss on the beta, but for some reason decided I would check the forums to see if I had the latest, only to find the official 4.5 was out. Woot. I backed everything up and tossed it on. It took a lot longer than any of the other OS’s I’ve put on my blackberry. Maybe cause its so chock full of awesome. After it loaded up and everything was restored how I had it, I gave it a spin. Holy slowness. I was getting the hourglass every time I tried to load something new. It was pretty frustrating. But I assumed it was just a temporary thing.

I made my way straight to the browser to see how youtube was over Edge vs. 3G. Not too shabby. The video seemed to stream just as well as it did with Verizon, and it seemed to fit the screen better. Unfortunately the Pearl has a pretty soft speaker, but it sounded fine with the headphones. Tho my phone did crash upon exiting the video, I remeber my curve did the same thing the first time I watched a youtube video on it and never gave me another problem.

The OS seems to have sped up considerably after the next restart as well. I havent checked out any html email on it yet, mainly cause I hardly get email, but I do like the new Suretype system a lot. I was also excited that the forbidden AIM client that has been been on the blackberry site for so long was incorporated into the OS, unfortunately when I tried to log in it said it was enabled for that device. Bummer.

The media features on 4.5 have a nice new look to them, and the media player has a few lil features added, tho nothing very different than 4.3 on the Verizon Blackberries. It is still to early to tell wether or not I will keep it on my Pearl. As long as there aren’t any more crashes, and the speed stays at a non frustrating level I will keep it. Otherwise its back to 4.2 till the next release. Now I will get back to checking out these Guess watches I found.