I now got a 7.1 device (a 9810) to check the thing with pdf rendering. Also, I tried my 9700 with BIS.
results:
9700+Bis: pdf will not be viewable, can only be saved. Unless you have the (not very good working) documents to go or another PDF viewer I am unable to view the PDF.
9810+BIS: same as above, but you can download the pdf, and open it with documents to go. The version which comes with the 9810 is able to open and render all documents correct, downloadtime is acceptable (within seconds). Since the rendering of the pdf is done locally the zoom function works with the speed of the Blackberrys CPU. For me it felt "good".
9810+BES: like BIS, still the pdf is downloaded, even If I forced the Device to only allow MDS browser. I thinkt this might relate installed to the documents to go, which grabs itself the handler for opening pdf documents.
So, with a modern device the default behaviour is like on an iPhone or Android: pdf is downloaded, and opened with a reader locally. With a OS5 device, you are able/have to use the BES servers capabilities to render a pdf. I dont have any OS6 device to test currently.
I dont know exactly, what this does mean for you. Since the BIS browser is always unwilling to render a PDF I guess, the problem is with your BES-Server/mobile connection, also If you say it takes some time for zooming, this also looks like the rendering is done on your Server.
If someone else is able to check these PDFs with an OS6 device that would make things clearer.
What I dont know for sure, if the current implementation of BIS is able to render a pdf linked in a web-page. My guess is, it does not.
I checked the documentation from rim:
http://docs.blackberry.com/en/smartp...432-4.3-en.pdf
For me it looks PDF support is only there for email attachments.
I also found an older doc:
Livelink - Redirection
Nothing here regarding pdf in browser.
Funny, look on page 5! It seems the Blackberry infrastructure server in 2004 did run on a Power Macintosh 9600 - nice machine. I owned one if these in the past, see attached screenshot.
Try out your 9900, load it with OS 7.1. I guess, unless your Blackberrys internetconnection is slow your experience should be good when opening these PDF Documents.