Mobile Phones Blog

BlackBerry Storm arriving tomorrow

November 6th, 2008 by Thomas

The highly anticipated BlackBerry Storm 9500, developed by Research In Motion in tandem with Vodafone is set to open up an almighty downpour on the smartphone/PDA market upon its release here in the UK tomorrow.

The Storm marks a new venture for RIM, being as it is the first BlackBerry PDA to come with a touchscreen UI, and a rather nice one at that. The interface features a unique brand of haptic feedback which is as of yet unseen on any other touchscreen handset. Whilst other touchscreens will give you a neat little conformational buzz whenever you tap in a command, tapping and typing away on the interface of the Storm is a different proposition – the actual screen itself depresses slightly into the main body of the handset and satisfyingly clicks back out. Keystrokes are accompanied by a slight feedback buzz which is similar to, but altogether different from the type of haptic feedback were used to from the LG Viewty et al.

The BlackBerry Storm is RIM’s most media-friendly handset so far, designed to, er, rein in the typical hardcore Blackberry buyer who might have been swayed by the push email support available on some of the newer smartphones on offer from rival makers. Among its features is a 3.2 Megapixel camera, 3G internet access and sat-nav functionality. Up to 16GB of storage is available, enough space to store plenty of choice tunes downloaded from the Vodafone Music Store, direct access to which, is a fully integrated feature.

Available exclusively on Vodafone’s network, the Storm will be available FREE on 24 month contracts costing £35 of more. By contrast, the T-Mobile G1 is only going free for contracts asking for £40 a month, with the 8GB version of the iPhone 3G going free on a £45 a month contract.

The BlackBerry Storm is expected to retail for £300 on contracts lower than £40 a month on 18 month contracts, and the same for customers signing up for a 24 month contract that is less than £35 a month.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under 3G, BlackBerry, G1, Google, O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.