Verizon officially announces touchscreen BlackBerry
"The world's first touchscreen BlackBerry...What will it feel like?" asks Verizon's teaser page for the upcoming BlackBerry Storm that was announced today.
Verizon's EV-DO Rev. A network will carry the Storm in the US, while Europe, India, and Oceania will offer the device through Vodafone. In India last August, however, the launch of the 3G iPhone was heavily qualified with disclaimers on the 3G network's limitations. Like the complaints about AT&T's 3G in the US, Indian consumers, too expressed frustration at the unreliable service provided by Vodafone's less-than-ready 3G network.
In May, Computerworld compared all the available 3G networks in the US, and determined that AT&T's was the best all around. Just three months later, the widespread opinion is that even our best network isn't that hot.
This BlackBerry may provide the opportunity for Verizon to show off its 3G mettle. During the company's earnings call in July, Verizon COO Denny Strigl noted that the AT&T-exclusive 3G iPhone affected Verizon "disproportionately less than our relative market share."
Furthermore, the enterprise-friendly BlackBerry is poised to sweep out the legs Apple has established in getting companies to support iPhone enterprise deployments.
As for the device itself, RIM touts the "click" feedback of the touchscreen, the accelerometer-triggered landscape/portrait screen swap, cut and paste features, full HTML browsing, and ambient light adjustment to screen brightness.
The Storm also offers a 3.2 megapixel camera, GPS, a 3.5 mm headphone jack (to accompany the full-screen media player functions,) stereo Bluetooth, 1 GB of onboard memory expandable to 16 GB via microSD, and, of course, the 480 x 360 (184pp1) haptic feedback touchscreen.
The Storm is expected to be available later this fall.