BlackBerry officially issues the BB10.1 OS Maintenance release

Today, BlackBerry starts seeding a new Maintenance release to its BB 10.1 OS. The update has a version number of v10.1.0.4537 and it’s a bug-and-fixes update that only adds a handful of truly new features.

Back in May, we saw BlackBerry announce the official availability of the BlackBerry 10.1 update to the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone (the Q10 already had it at launch). Now, the company has a second go at this one, refining the user experience and adding some minor new features.

Both the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 are able to receive the new update over Wi-Fi. Interestingly, the BlackBerry Q5 smartphone is not mentioned in the changelog.

Of course, availability is region-specific and the 10.1 Maintenance release will initially be available only to customers in the Asia Pacific, Canada, and EMEA.

Latin America users will be able to update in 2-3 weeks, while customers in the US will have to wait even longer, until the end of summer.

The most notable new features include:

• A new next/previous message navigation gesture;
• Two factor authentication for Twitter and LinkedIn;
• A search field in BlackBerry Remember;Support for unlock with simple (numeric) passwords such as a PIN;
• A new IT policy allows work and personal accounts in the BlackBerry Hub to be separated;
• Input support for Simplified and Traditional Chinese;
• Input and UI translation for Korean;
• BlackBerry World app gets several UI enhancements, including a Wishlist;
• Latest versions of the Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn apps.

You can read the full changelog over at BlackBerry’s website as well. Also our fellow tech journalists from CrackBerry.com already have a nice walkthrough of the new stuff on video.