There’s a lot of talk of leaks in the BlackBerry world. A leak is what you think it is. Imagine a bucket and there’s a hole on the bottom. The contents in that bucket will leak out. Most likely, this is unintentional.

1. News Leak

The easiest leak to explain. A news leak is information that’s given out of something that has to do with something in the future. All these reports we’re getting about new BlackBerry smartphones arriving or rumors of official releases are news leaks.

2. Memory Leak

A memory leak, as my Computer Science professor would explain it, is bad programming. In a program/app, memory is used to store information. This information can be variables like Contact information or GPS coordinates or something as simple as a counter (a varible that just counts). This is essential for a program to run. In a memory leak, memory is used by an application, but the application doesn’t tell the memory to stop “remembering” that information.

So (in this case) the phone does not get the memory back. Although the memory is technically still there, applications can’t use it because the apps think it’s in use. Over time, the limited memory on the phone will be depleted which will cause it to slow down or freeze or shut down.

The chances of a memory leak is more prevalent in 3rd-party apps (Applications not made by BlackBerry) because the skill level of the application writer may be suspect.

3. Software Leak

Unlike the typical dumbphone, the software on a BlackBerry smartphone is updated quite frequently. Research in Motion (BlackBerry) continues to try to make their phones run faster or more efficiently or to get rid of possible memory leaks, etc etc..

These updates, though, are usually not available for the general public.

It’s only when Research in Motion works out all the kinks do they make it an official release. An official release is like when Windows XP updated from service pack one to service pack 2.

Inbetween each official release, there are updates that Research in Motion is trying out. Usually for software companies, these updates are kept in-house. When the public some how gets the hold of it, it’s known as a leak.

These leaks are obviously updates in some form over the version before it. Sometimes they can be fairly unstable which could be a reason why it’s not available as official. Sometimes they may try improving one aspect of the phone while messing up another. There’s a lot of reasons why the particular update is not official.

In the case of the BlackBerry Storm, it seems the updates haven’t been official because RIM wants to make sure they get everything right. Leak after leak, the phone just seems to get better and better. This is why the whole BlackBerry Storm nation goes crazy whenever a new leak arrives. This is why it surprises me that people are still using the official .75.

*the Storm picture quality is pretty awesome