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Home»BlackBerry Software»News & Rumors, BlackBerry Apps, Special Coverage

CTIA 2010: Bolt Browser 2.0 Arriving Tomorrow; Bringing Tabbed Browsing To BlackBerry

by Bla1ze on 22 Mar 2010 11:05 PM
152
 
Bolt Browser 2.0 Arriving Tomorrow; Bringing Tabbed Browsing To BlackBerry

*UPDATE - The link for BOLT ver. 2.0 is now available, download here*

Kevin is currently in Las Vegas attending CTIA 2010 and sent us all off this little piece of information from the Showstoppers event there. What you see above in the pic is an early glimpse of what is to be BOLT 2.0. Releasing early tomorrow the new BOLT browser has many other upgrades coming with it aside from just tabbed browsing. Some new features have been added and plenty of upgrades have happened server side to enhance the browsing experience for users.

“Each new version of BOLT becomes more exciting to announce,” said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream.  “We are closely listening to our end-users through our user forum, our Twitter and Facebook pages, and their comments on blog posts and articles, and they are guiding our development roadmap in important ways.  It is this close relationship we are building with our users to which we attribute our stunning growth. BOLT added 1 million new users in the last five weeks alone.”

BOLT has upped the ante here for those looking for a better browsing experience on the BlackBerry platform. As most users are awaiting the webkit browser from Research In Motion, BOLT is offering that experience in one way or another right now. I certainly cannot wait to see how this latest version looks. Hit the jump for the full list of additional features added to version 2.0 of BOLT. We'll let you all know tomorrow when the 2.0 version goes live.

In addition to tabbed browsing being added, Bolt maintains all the original features from earlier versions plus, many other new features:

  • Perfect rendering of Web pages on any class of phone, scoring 100 percent on the Web Standard’s project Acid3 test.
  • Streaming video from many of the world’s most popular video sharing websites, including YouTube, MySpace, Blip.TV and MetaCafe, as well as websites that stream videos such as CNN, ESPN and any website with embedded YouTube videos.
  • Super fast download speeds.
  • Copy and pasting text.
  • Built-in integration with Twitter and Facebook.
  • Password manager.
  • Download/Upload manager.
  • Ability to run Web-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, ranging from Google docs to Mafia Wars.
  • The inclusion of widgets, standalone mobile applications that are run directly from the browser, such as a weather app, calendar app, calculator, Twitter client and others. These widgets let people using any phone take part in the mobile apps revolution.
  • Best of breed over-the-air data compression, resulting in faster load times and decreased data usage.
  • Patented split screen viewing to make surfing complicated Web pages simple, and viewing content on the smallest of screens easy.
  • Additional notable upgrades in BOLT 2.0 include a faster widget gallery with updated user interface and a server upgrade to WebKit 4.03
Filed Under: News & Rumors, BlackBerry Apps, Special Coverage; Tags: BOLT, browsers, CTIA2010
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152 Comments

Posted by devGOD Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

ooo gaga... hmm might give bolt another try

 
 
Posted by devGOD Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Just installed 2.0 beta WTF is the deal with the font size and type? I literally have to hold the phone 3-4 inches from my face to do anything with this browser. honestly what's the deal that?

 
 
Posted by JustaNJDiva Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

You can just go to preferences and increase the font size to XL or XXXL, like I do.

 
 
Posted by waker Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

On the storm, if I could just get it to offset the cursor so I can see the darn thing it would make ALL the difference in the world. Is there any way to do this the cursor is ALWAYS under my finger where I cant see it?

 
 
Posted by Elvis Da King Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I have the same problem

 
 
Posted by xxgreatestyouknowxx Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 690 days ago

bolt 2.0 is a waste, opera mini 5 is 3 times better... very slow loading and tabs suck, let alone using the cursor... (BB 9550) its not good for storm 2, thats all...

 
 
Posted by dx169 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

Awesome! I love Bolt!

 
 
Posted by AFriske Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

might be worth the switch. Bolt is used for about 1/3 of my browsing now. I like the tabs.

 
 
Posted by Junius8 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

How do i get this on my Bold 9700?

 
 
Posted by pezboy Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

Haven't used bolt in a while. Looking forward to give it another whirl.

 
 
Posted by undermine Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

Opera is no. 1 for me. Will test this out.

 
 
Posted by Kirstylawer Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I hope that it boots faster than it did... That was always the part that got me. But then again the features may outweigh the boot time.

 
 
Posted by bighap Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

YES!

 
 
Posted by cayans Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

personally I think that Opera Mini 5 its much better and faster, the only thing its that it isn't smooth while ur looking the website but it does the job very well

 
 
Posted by muneton17 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

how do you think that Opera Mini 5 is much better and faster, if you havent even tried out Bolt 2.0 since it hasn't been released yet, unless you were a beta tester?

 
 
Posted by r3g Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

My thoughts exactly. Cant judge it when its not even out. And even if you were a beta tester you cant compare a beta to a finished piece of software.

 
 
Posted by waker Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

opera is not faster. I love opera however. I love how bolt renders pages.

 
 
Posted by luqman24 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

And it freezes completely at times which forces u to do a battery pull that's why I stopped using it :/

 
 
Posted by muneton17 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

whaaaaaa? i've never experienced that. lol

 
 
Posted by luqman24 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

On my Bold 9000 I have but idk about the other ones

 
 
Posted by StormJH1 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Yes, but I have had the latest version of Bolt to compare to both Opera Mini 4-point-whatever and Opera Mini 5, and Opera just does a better job.

I'm certainly going to give Bolt 2.0 a shot, and there's really no reason not to keep both of them around on your phone. But I pretty much stopped using Bolt (in favor of Opera) b/c (1) The fonts and rendering are ugly; (2) It basically loads to 20% and then decides it doesn't want to load the page anymore--no error message--it just stops.

 
 
Posted by mchruss03 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I'm looking forward to seeing how awesome this updated version is. I use BOLT already and think it is loads better so I can't imagine how awesome it will be to have some of these features added onto it!!

It looks like BOLT has the possibility to become the Firefox of mobile browsers!

Exciting,
-Russ03

 
 
Posted by EGerhardt Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

To be honest I think that BOLT has been blackberry's firefox for a long time. Whatever they do to eliminate the need to zoom in is practically magic. Tabbed browsing is just gravy.

 
 
Posted by longhairbilly Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I got a little tired of the 20% slow down with Bolt so I tried and now like Opera. Now I have to go back and play with Bolt. It's a fun problem to have. Keep it coming guys.

 
 
Posted by SoCal Addict Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

Kevin Dude!
shoot and post some video!!!!

 
 
Posted by Bla1ze Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

You just wanna see the Ed Hardy chicks again. lol

 
 
Posted by SoCal Addict Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

what can I say...i'm a sinner...

 
 
Posted by jpattersonlee Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I wonder if it will work well on the Storm.

 
 
Posted by ba_hamilton Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I will have to try 2.0. I did not like the original version on my Storm.

 
 
Posted by Nicketmaster Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

Tabbed browsing .ooks neat. I've been a big fan of Opera more than I have of Bolt, but am always open to new wonders :)

 
 
Posted by aris20 Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

I have tried Bolt browser a couple of times in the past, and never liked it that much, now Opera 5, its good, but ill give it a try to the new improved Bolt browser when it gets released, it got me a little excited :D

 
 
Posted by R1cE Monday, Mar 22, 2010 691 days ago

omg I gotta try this. Just went to the official Opera browser, and it upsets me how I still see the mobile pages. :/

 
 
Posted by BigJav209 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

cant wait for the release...

 
 
Posted by BigJav209 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

cant wait for the release...

 
 
Posted by aris20 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

LOL woohoo its my B DAY :P

 
 
Posted by MPh1000 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Like that so there won't be double tabs to get into a page, Or having double posts lol, (Opera Mini) f.e lol^^^^^^^^^^^

 
 
Posted by BoldtotheMax Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Lookin' forward to trying it out. I use all of the browsers, but Bolt is a nice medium as it is stable and decently fast. If it is as fast as Opera5 and stable with tabs, we have a winner! Webkit what???

 
 
Posted by princebb Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I used to be a Bolt user and then I tried the new Opera 5 and that was faster and had tab browsing, it's very nice. So I deleted Bolt. I'll give Bolt another try.

 
 
Posted by Kirblar Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

"Ability to run Web-based applications written in Ajax, Javascript and other Web programming languages, ranging from Google docs to Mafia Wars."
And here we were, waiting for SkyFire to come out to support java for games and stuff. Go Bolt!

 
 
Posted by Propa Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Am I the only one that enjoys using the blackberry default browser? I mean I use Bolt for things I can't do on the BB browser but that's about it

 
 
Posted by myka401 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I'm of the same mind.

 
 
Posted by jonno_atamaniuk Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I am another who honestly tends to prefer the simplicity of the native browser. Especially on the blackberry Storm 9530 where opera mini 5's controls force me to go back to the whole no-click way of navigating, which I often don't like. I do just fine with the browser as is, but sometimes some things don't load up as quickly as I would like so I use a 3rd party browser. I will have to give bolt 2.0 a thorough testing. If it actually brings significant improvements to browsing on the blackberry storm, I may suggest it to others who have their gripes about the native browser.

 
 
Posted by fncygtrjammer Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I'm with ya buddy, I used opera for awhile but I find myself using the native browser almost exclusively now. I do use opera from time to time but it just doesn't have the same feel as the native does on my 9700. I'll definitely check out the new bolt, I was extremely disappointed with it before, hopefully it doesn't freeze up on me at 20% like the last version I had.

 
 
Posted by BBaddict52 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

I've tried both, opera and bolt but i still
come back to the native browser. Maybe the new
Bolt can satisfy me.

 
 
Posted by myka401 Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

No worries Propa I'm with ya

 
 
Posted by conker Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Seriously, I love what they are doing, but how does BOLT make any money?

 
 
Posted by kelvinsw Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Guess they would try to sell it to OEM once we "tested" is great?

 
 
Posted by MarcSMASH Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

My question: Is it going to work properly on the Storms?

*update: I DL'd it and I'm still not impressed. Opera Mini 5 is still faster and better optimized for touchscreens. I'm still an Opera man. =)

 
 
Posted by ivor.berry Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Looking foward to trying Bolt. Tried opera mini 5 and chucked it out because I can barely read it on max font size. Hopefully Bolt won't have this problem.

 
 
Posted by kelvinsw Tuesday, Mar 23, 2010 691 days ago

Tested it since Bolt was on beta...So far I like Opera, Bolt real slow...always stay 20%...also no East Asia support.

 
 
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