blackberry

RIM Introduces the Blackberry Storm

Not wanting to leave Apple alone in the “Uber-Cool Touchscreen Phone” market, Research In Motion (RIM) along with their US and European launch partners, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, officially introduced the BlackBerry Storm smartphone earlier today.

“Designed to satisfy the needs of both consumers and business customers, the BlackBerry Storm smartphone combines the powerful communications features, global connectivity and personal productivity advantages of the BlackBerry® platform with a revolutionary touch-screen technology that dramatically enhances the touch interface and enables easy and precise typing. The world’s first “clickable” touch-screen responds much like a physical keyboard and also supports single-touch, multi-touch and gestures for intuitive and efficient application navigation.”

“We are proud to introduce the first touch-screen based BlackBerry smartphone together with Verizon Wireless and Vodafone,” said Mike Lazaridis, president and co-chief executive officer at RIM. “The BlackBerry Storm is a revolutionary touch-screen smartphone that meets both the communications and multimedia needs of customers and solves the longstanding problem associated with typing on traditional touch-screens. Consumers and business customers alike will appreciate this unique combination of a large and vibrant screen with a truly tactile touch interface.”

“The BlackBerry Storm offers our customers more ways to stay connected to both their personal and professional lives – whether in their communities or around the globe,” said Mike Lanman, vice president and chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless. “The BlackBerry Storm combines the reliability of our 3G network with the dependability and network efficiency of the BlackBerry platform to deliver our customers the ultimate wireless experience – all in one of the coolest smartphones available on the market today.”

Moving touch screen aside, this new BlackBerry does have some great features packed into it, including:

  • DataViz Documents To Go
  • 3.2MP digital camera
  • Built-in GPS receiver
  • 1GB of built-in memory and a microSD card slot for up to 16GB of extra storage
  • 480×360 resolution display
  • Removable 1400mAh battery

Read the full RIM press release here

The “clickbable” touchscreen sounds like an interesting gimmick. When you press down on the screen, it is suppose to have a little bit of give in it that gives you tactile feedback much like you would get if you where pressing a mouse button or typing on a keyboard. We’ll get back to you on that when the device is in wide distribution to figure out if this feature is a boon or a bust.

At this time, RIM has not announced a release date or pricing for the Storm with or without new service contracts with Verizon or Vodafone.

For more details about the new BlackBerry Storm, visit the RIM BlackBerry Storm website.