Last week the trackball on my BlackBerry Curve decided to quit on me. The thing couldn’t roll down a hill if it tried and, well, the phone’s dated version of the operating system was starting to make me look like a mobile T-Rex. (I always thought if I were to be a dinosaur, I’d be a T-Rex.)

As a true CrackBerry addict, I had opted to replace my Verizon Curve 8830 with the new Curve 8530. Yes, rather than a Droid, I went with the BlackBerry because I am a Blackberry Messenger fiend, love the speed of the e-mail and my fingers can’t live without the physical keyboards. However, within a few minutes of using the new trackpad equipped Curve, I was just downright disappointed in the Canadian smartphone pioneers.  What used to be a groundbreaking mobile operating system a couple of years ago, has been minimally updated with only new skins and a slightly improved interface.  The attempts to catch up to the Apple iPhones, Palm Pres and Motorola Droids of the world haven’t been executed correctly.

Take RIM’s shot at its own application store. Deemed Blackberry App World, the application store is not even preloaded on the brand new device! In order to get the application portal on the smartphone I had to search for it via Google, and download the application. Yep, I had to download the application to get applications. Counterintuitive, much? I’m not sure how RIM expects its customers to know this store is even available and that it contains hundreds of applications, nonetheless that it compete with application-centric phones like the iPhone and Android that have simple, preloaded application marketplaces.

Once running, the store is actually quite nice and easy to navigate but its inventory is a different story. I couldn’t find a number of applications for my phone, including TweetGenius and TwitterBerry. And don’t think it is just  a coincidence that the two missing applications  were social networking based.

Sure, Facebook makes a decent application for BlackBerry, but unlike the Palm Pre or the iPhone it lacks social skills. There is no integrated contact management with the option to fill in your current address book with different social networking information. Even when new and promising features like visual voicemail seem to be preloaded, they end up requiring a download and what feels like a 10-step process to configure. Unfortunately, while RIM is attempting to bring these newer features offered by its competitors and the social Web ecosystem to its own operating system, the implementation is halfhearted.

RIM, what worked a few years ago just doesn’t anymore. Although you may continue to attract enterprise customers with superior security and e-mail, to compete today in the consumer game you need products that add simplicity, engage with Internet integration and offer easy access to compelling third-party applications.  Yes, there remains a dedicated group of consumers (eh hem, me) that are still looking for the BlackBerry bread and butter – the strong email support, the speed of services like BlackBerry Messenger and good hardware – but they aren’t willing to deal with lagging features and incomplete experiences.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel (seriously, we don’t want the scroll wheel anymore), but continuing to drop the ball isn’t going to work anymore. Please, get it rolling again.

Benchmarking the very earliest publicly-available code for Google Chrome OS seems destined to only highlight the platform’s early stage of development, especially when you throw rivals such as Moblin 2.1, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, Fedora 12 and openSUSE 11.2 into the mixture.  Still, that’s just what Phoronix have done, and unsurprisingly the new Google netbook OS came in last position.

Phoronix used a Samsung NC10 as their test mule, and then put the various netbook and desktop distros through a number of challenges.  That included H.264 video playback, OpenArena, LZMA compression, 7-Zip compression, IOzone, PostMark, dcraw, Ogg Encoding, FFmpeg and x264 video encoding, some of which you could readily argue might not be the usual netbook fare.

Still, they went on to look at CPU use and battery life, eventually crowning Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 as the best netbook distro thanks to its top runtime and minimal demands on processor and memory.  The test results may not be too surprising, at least in terms of Google Chrome OS, but it’s an interesting read from an open-source OS perspective.

Google has more than emphasized that its Chrome operating system will be super speedy; it will boot in only seven seconds and surfing the web will be just be quicker. The irony is that you will actually have to wait for Google’s OS to arrive and for a pretty long time in the technology world.  After giving a preview yesterday of what is in store from the Internet giant’s computing platform, Google’s Sundar Pichai said that they are “a year away” from releasing products with the operating system. Yep, we are going to be waiting for a solid 365 days!

When it comes to technology I’m an instant satisfaction type of girl, so naturally I was less than thrilled about the long wait before we start seeing new laptops with Google’s Chrome OS preloaded. (By the way, the fact that you cannot download and install the OS yourself is total BS and a subject for another column.)   But, I am resigned to accepting the product delay not only because it relates to Google geeks’ needing sufficient time to work on the back end of the OS and on other techy stuff for quality assurance, but also because other improvements and developments in mobile technology over the next year or two will make the Chrome OS worth waiting for and make it an overall better experience.

More ubiquitous wireless connectivity. Given Google’s deep roots in, you know, the Internet it makes sense that they have built an entire operating system on top of the web browser. Not only will you have the main functionality of a browser, but you will be able do more through web applications that are to be developed over the next year. Point is Google wants you to spend your time online and it is clear that there will be very little functionality (details are few and far between on this) to the OS if it isn’t connected to the Net.  With WiFi being spotty at best, I would assume that most Chrome notebooks will have some sort of 3G technology. However, beyond 3G’s kick to the wallet it is also slow.

The fourth generation of cellular wireless is beginning to be rolled out with sporadic WiMax coverage areas, but that uptake will be a lot wider over the next year or so. In addition, Verizon’s 4G LTE network which promises even faster speeds is slated to be rolled out during 2010 and into the next decade. With the evolution of 4G in the coming years, Google Chrome OS netbooks will be a lot more useful and powerful than they would be if introduced at this moment in time.

Improved netbook, notebook form factors. In the last year alone we have seen the physical evolution of the netbook. What started out as a notebook with a 7-inch screen has now evolved into almost a real size laptop. With 10 to 12 inch displays that can accommodate better ergonomics and longer usage, netbooks are not only better in terms of function, but have improved in design and style. And this is only going to get better in the 2010 with companies designing and releasing smartbooks that can accommodate different types of form factors because of the smaller and fanless processor architecture. By mid-2010 we will have even better looking and more interestingly crafted mobile computers that will have hardware, as we are told by Google, that will be optimized for the new OS.

Web applications with more functionality than ever before. Apple released its application SDK a few months before it actually rolled out its application store, giving developers time to create some of the most impressive applications around. It will be the same with Chrome OS. Similar to the way Adobe Air has provided a whole new crop of connected applications for the desktop, developers will be hard at work for the next year figuring out services and features to bring to the new platform, including many that will support hardware graphics acceleration and multithreading. I have no doubt that Google’s web applications will surprise us with their capabilities, just as Android and iPhone applications have during the last year. The more time for those to brew the better.

Chrome OS netbooks and notebooks if released today just wouldn’t be as compelling as those that will hit the market a year or two from now. (In fact, I actually think that the end of 2010 may even be too early for Chrome OS given the wireless ubiquity issue.)  As Google has said, it is working on the future of computing and, as always, we must wait for the future to arrive, just as we must wait for our operating systems to boot up.