After months of rumors, the Storm—the first-ever touchscreen BlackBerry—is finally official, and it's set for Verizon Wireless (exclusively, for now) later this fall. Read on for the details.

Verizon hasn't coughed up a hard-and-fast release date for the Storm—nor any pricing details, for that matter—but this much we do know: It'll pack in dual-mode CDMA and GSM radios for full-on world calling, 3G access (both EV-DO Rev. A and HSPA), GPS (along with turn-by-turn directions), Bluetooth (including the A2DP profile for stereo Bluetooth headsets), and a 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and autofocus.

Measuring 4.4 by 2.4 by 0.55 inches and weighing in at about 5.5 ounces, the Storm (which is also set to arrive in Europe through Vodafone) looks to be roughly the same size as an iPhone or the upcoming T-Mobile G1, so it should be reasonably pocketable.

The centerpiece, of course, will be the Storm's 480 by 360-pixel, 3.25-inch glass display, which will support multitouch (good for two-finger gestures, a la the iPhone). Even better, though, is a feature that RIM calls "ClickThrough": a design that lets you "distinctly feel the screen being pressed and released with a gentle click" for a "highly intuitive experience." Sounds promising, but whether the Storm's display actually delivers the tactile experience that's missing on the iPhone and the G1 remains to be seen (or felt, I guess); I look forward to trying it out in person. Update: Click here for initial ClickThrough impressions from the Web; so far, so good.

In addition to the multitouch display, the Storm will also come with an ambient light sensor, along with an accelerometer that'll automatically turn the screen when you hold the phone sideways. Speaking of which: When it comes to entering text, holding the Storm in a landscape view will give you a full QWERTY touch keypad, while in portrait mode you'll get a SureType keypad (or the same layout as on a BlackBerry Pearl).

Naturally, messaging will doubtless be one of the Storm's strong suits. Expect full-on BlackBerry e-mail support, complete with push e-mail and access to POP and IMAP e-mail servers. Also on board: SMS, picture and instant messaging.

The Storm will also come with full-on Office document editing—including support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents—courtesy of DataViz Documents to Go. Of course, plenty of other BlackBerry applications are already available, and there's word that a branded BlackBerry store is on tap, similar to Apple's App Store and the Android Market.

Besides its 3.2MP camera, the Storm is set to arrive with full HTML Web browser (double-tap to zoom, tap and slide to scroll), a video and music player, with Verizon promising smooth, full-screen video playback. There's also a 3.5mm jack for your earphones, 1GB of internal storage, and a microSD expansion slot for another 16GB of flash memory.

wetin dem want tun phones to they will soon make phones that have unlimited memory, that also use voic prompt to enta menu and all others, wen ipod came out wit mp3 players non could contest now is their iphone dat has condemned n96 to the bottomless pit pls at phone makers tak am jeje

The storm is over.

storm in a teacup

Oops.that cant be the answer to iphone.the phone is more of like "whats the question again".andriod is the answer when its less buggy.

storm?? Nah they aren't there yet!

Maybe just an 'intro' before the sunshine

what is wrong with these guys?
just when we just got the BOLD, they are here again with Hurricane Storm
cant wait for it to land 9ja thou

Touch screen all tru? then that gonna be so so cute

No WLAN = No buy

No WLAN Serious what does it use.cant be.

pc guru:

No WLAN Serious what does it use.can't be.

It uses 3G. Verizon's 3G coverage is pretty good, but that's no benefit to people outside the US. PLus with a full HTML browser like the iPhone's you can bet it'll use up loads of cash for browsing for people without a monthly data plan.

I just dont get it but why must every touch screen phone be seen as an answer to the iPhone?

Sure, there's a strong competition. . . and the iPhone was the first true touch-screen phone. But considering the hype and craze over touch, its only logical for devices manufacturers to give their own fans a taste of the touch meal as well.

The Blackberry Storm is still whatever it is. . . a Blackberry. Nothing more, nothing else. If it was the answer to the iPhone, can someone tell me why it lacks WiFi then?

With or without the iPhone, true touch sensitivity was already the next major turn handsets where gonna take anyway. The iPhone craze only made it so much sooner.

blackberry na blackberry jare!! wether Bold or Storm or Tornadoe
Wateva

the only thing that can give the Iphone some sweat is probably the new Nokia 97, set to ship for over $600 (excluding taxes) in 2009.

its specs (though I'm not much for specs) are:

1. 3.5-inch, 640 x 360 pixel (that's a 16:9 aspect ratio) touchscreen display with tactile feedback. the iphnoe screen is 320 x 480.

2. physical QWERTY keyboard

3. HSDPA, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios

4. A-GPS

5. 32GB of onboard memory with microSD expansion (for up to 48GB total capacity)

6. battery capable of up to 1.5 days of continuous audio playback or 4.5-hours video

7.  5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass and "DVD quality" video capture at 30fps

8. S60 5th Edition


now thats some powerhouse, though it remains to be seen how the touchscreen interface will fare given the disappointing stuff on the Balckberry Storm and the G1. from what i can see of the screenie below, the interface STILL needs a plectrum/stylus, so that rules out multitouch.


and they better do soemthing about their certification program, graphics hardware  and apps SDK.

In commerce there's what we call master brand.the product that dominates a particular segment of the market so much that when you think of the segment the product is the first to come to mind.after that all others are ME TOO products.the iphone has replaced the word touchscreen.as much as i don't like the iphone.its a ground breaking technology thus setting a standard for any phone to be called touchscreen.just for the record this phone here is crap.

pc guru:

In commerce there's what we call master brand.the product that dominates a particular segment of the market so much that when you think of the segment the product is the first to come to mind.after that all others are ME TOO products.the iphone has replaced the word touchscreen.as much as i don't like the iphone.its a ground breaking technology thus setting a standard for any phone to be called touchscreen.just for the record this phone here is crap.

its actually an N96 conjoined with nokia 5800 and E90. seems my prediction of a convergent device is well on course. Nokia still insists its specs that sell a phone even though the lesson in japan proved them wrong. but still its one good looking mother (though me doubt they'll keep that glamorous pearl color)

meanwhile Nokia is still trying to sell phones to the iphone-and-blackberry-crazed United States. PC GURU, americans dont care much for Nokia; most of Nokia sales and market domination is in europe and the middle east. the best selling phone in the US was the Motorola Razr V3, but recently it got bumbed off the top by Iphone.

these guys, Nokia included, should just lay off specs for a while and concentrate on making a killer software to shup up Apple once and for all. all they do is tweak the interface and pile up loads of same stuff other manufacturers are hawking (DVB-H, HSDPA, Multimeg cameras, bluetooth 2.1, etc etc).

You've a got point there.Nokia wants to improve thier software that's why it bought symbian and turned it into a non profit org.that way more developers will come together.and if not licenses may either be removed or reduced.

I think I'd agree wit naijafan,

the manufacturers may have not targeted their latest models at 'killing the iphone', they're just being theirselves & trying to give their fans a feel of what the other brands have. .

If they were to kill the iphone, its as simple as laying bare each & every quality the iphone has & increasing their's a step further

dragnet:

I think I'd agree wit naijafan,

the manufacturers may have not targeted their latest models at 'killing the iphone', they're just being theirselves & trying to give their fans a feel of what the other brands have. .

If they were to kill the iphone, its as simple as laying bare each & every quality the iphone has & increasing their's a step further

Ah, except it isnt THAT easy.

remember theres a little thing called copyright and patent. iphone is covered by around 300 Apple patents. except nokia has some legal magic wand or tons of cash to settle suits and pay royalty, reverse engineering is a big no-no.

also, it doesnt make sense laying off making a flagship device and instead concentrating on mainstream gadgets  in the face of dwindling market share. the iphone is making waves because its a high end device, meanwhile consumers loyal to other brands would want something with similar balance of function and awesomeness.

so, everybody is going off their heads churning out touch-based phones thinking that touch UI technology is primarily what makes the iphone what it is.

i can bet you the iphone is every manufacturer's dream invention: mass following bordering on cult, excess brand loyalty bordering on acute fanboyism (i mean, check out me and texazz ), huge sales, popularity, awards, accolades, and of course the inevitable smugness of the inventor (notice steve jobs' new-found swagger)

so, if there is a need for a high end phone, then theres need to compete on almost equal or better footing with iphone: software.

problem is, most manufacturers do not have the competence to build a new powerful OS similar to or better than iphone OS from scratch.

Symbian, which evolved from EPOC has miles to go; Blackbery OS is on the same wavelength as Symbian, the Linux variants are just like their PC counterparts (focus-less) etc.

the only one with a real chance of knocking iphone OS off the high throne is actually Microsoift with its long experience of crafting OS and Win Mobile but then again Microsoft has never really had a recent history of being innovative, has it? instaed of totally overhauling WinMo, it left the task to the likes of HTC and Sony-ericsson to figure out how to make the OS less complicated and more appealing. from WinMo 5 to winmo 6.1, little has changed. Microsoft even hardly uses WinMo forits mobile products, opting instead for the dreaded Win CE (else the Zune would have benn happily running on a custom WinMo).


Google's Android has the potential but now its all left to the community (with no cohesive goal structure, just like PC distros).

so it takes experience and lots of money to fashion a good OS from scratch, and doubtless Nokia has money to fund R and D into perhaps a supersymbian but it has to start from square One (or two), which is light years behind Apple with decades of experience coding some of the best OS's there ever were.

and while Nokia is sweating away working out a fresh OS ( with the attendant stages of bugs, debugs, Alphas, betas, gammas, release candidates, etc) Apple and Android have meanwhile gone farther ahead, leading to a perpetual game of catch-up.



and that is why i strongly feel nokia should go with Android, or Maemo. afterall, Motorola is going the Android route, effectively ditchng Symbian and WinMo.

lets just be honest and say these aging OS (Symbian, WinMo) ought to either be retired, or totally overhauled.

no

mMm. . . . . Apple ! . . a thorn in d soul

Ex inferis, blazing hot,

why compare a blackberry to the iphone? apart from playing games, music and surfing what else can the iphone do? toy.

flyuche:

why compare a blackberry to the iphone? apart from playing games, music and surfing what else can the iphone do? toy.

sir, people like you make me look like a fanboy. im only saying the truth as it is, not insisting the iphone is the be-all-end -all. i even made the case that Android has the potential to beat the iphone.

your question rather should be, what does blackberry have that the iphone doesnt?

the selling point of blackberry is push emails, abi? well sorry but iphone now supports push for EVERYTHING, not just email. we are just waiting for apple to implement it to services and the appstore.

exchange support? we got that too (see screenie).

and we iphone users have MobileMe!

the only thing lacking is office document editing, and that is soon coming via a software update.

so to answer your question: play games, music, videos, youtube, geotagging, gps, maps, phone calls, emails, surfing, IM, photos, sms, social networking (Facebook, Myspace apps etc), document viewing (excel,word, pdf local or attachments), weather and stocks, ebooks, etc etc.

flyuche:

why compare a blackberry to the iphone? apart from playing games, music and surfing what else can the iphone do? toy.

Quit being a troll and do some research for yourself. All Ex Inferis posted is open knowledge on the internet.

texazzpete:


Quit being a troll and do some research for yourself. All Ex Inferis posted is open knowledge on the internet.

good one, fellow club member of the enlightened

Ex & Tex -----hmmmmm
but seriously, Apple shud employ u guys oh

lynxnoon:

Ex & Tex -----hmmmmm
but seriously, Apple should employ u guys oh

Nah! didnt you watch The Simpsons, season 20 episode 7 titled Mypods and Boomsticks? Lisa simpson was offered a job at mApple ( a parody of Apple) by Steve Mobs (yup, a caricature of steve jobs). boy, was she excited! only to discover the job entailed dressing up an a mypod (ipod) and handing out flyers saying "Think Differently" !!

i dont think im cut out to be a mascot.


but seriously, we only say good of good things and we give our reasons for saying thus. i'd feel much better if the opposition had actually bothered to use the iphone so as to appreciate what we talking about. on our part, we are Nokia veterans so we know where the flaws are.

mind you, iphone can be a piece of sh1t if you are into bluetoothing, megapixels, MMS, clipboard, camera flash etc. (FACT: most phone camera flash, especially the LED type, are rubbish anyway).

and frankly how many people's lappy can comfortably display a five megapixel image? megapixel is only a small aspect of digital photography, the others being lens optical quality, camera sensor, and your shutterbug abilities to frame a good shot. so a five MP camera wont necessarily be better than a 2MP if the latter has better lens and sensors.

whenever i take a pic on N95, ive often had to crop the image, on an SXGA (1280 x 1024) screen!

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is ridiculous really there can only be one I PHONE TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Photocopy Ko EASY!!!!

What is wrong to these clowns

Who said storm can come close to being an answer to the iPhone?? or even The nokia 97? thats all rubbish! If you like the iphone for what it does, the u will not get moved by the blackberry.

I have always said the blackberry is overated! completely overated. Its selling point used to be push emails but now nokia, SE, iPhone and others do push so what do I need a blackberry that is tied to RIM for

nonsense!!

its not tied to RIM, its tied to whoever your carrier is. RIM's service is transparent. wot, never used a BlackBerry before?

they arent that bad, especially the Bold.

cabali:

What is wrong to these clowns

Who said storm can come close to being an answer to the iPhone?? or even The nokia 97? thats all rubbish! If you like the iphone for what it does, the u will not get moved by the blackberry.

I have always said the blackberry is overated! completely overated. Its selling point used to be push emails but now nokia, SE, iPhone and others do push so what do I need a blackberry that is tied to RIM for

nonsense!!

you have never used  the iphone or  a blackberry. so just maintain your silence and read, don't post!

I actually ignored cabali's post earlier. Didnt want to start another argument with someone that doesnt know what he's saying.