RIM’s service outages usually send BlackBerry owners into withdrawal shakes, but the BlackBerry Internet Service downtime coming up on June 28-29 ought to be easier to get through. That’s because, when the BIS lights come back on, BlackBerries with OS 4.5 (Pearls, Curves, 8800 series, 8700/8703e) will have HTML email, native format attachment downloading, over-the-air device upgrades, free/busy calendar lookup, and ability to search the server for old messages.

When the OS 4.5 upgrade was announced earlier this year, handhelds got a lot of nice new features immediately, but the email updates had to wait for BIS to upgrade its network (from 2.4 to 2.5, if you must know). Next weekend that’s happening.

Good going, RIM! It’s about time. Now if you could just do something about that browser…

via Gear Diary