Skip to main content

RIM Announces Touchscreen BlackBerry Storm

RIM Announces Touchscreen BlackBerry Storm

Canada’s Research in Motion has formally announced its new BlackBerry Storm smartphone, touting what the company is calling the world’s first “clickable” touchscreen design: the screen depresses slightly when the screen is pressed, giving users a sense of tactile feedback for their clicks. The phone is due to launch this fall in North America exclusively on Verizon Wireless, and will also be available to users in Europe, New Zealand, India, and Australia via Vodafone.

“The BlackBerry Storm is a revolutionary touch-screen smartphone that meets both the communications and multimedia needs of customers and solves the long-standing problem associated with typing on traditional touch-screens,” said RIM presidents and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, in a statement. “Consumers and business customers alike will appreciate this unique combination of a large and vibrant screen with a truly tactile touch interface.”

Recommended Videos

The BlackBerry Storm offers 3G connectivity, which on Verizon means it packs EV-DO Rev. A/CMDA connectivity along with quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM and 2100MHz UMTS/HSPA for global use. The Storm features a 3.25-inch, 480 by 360 touchscreen display, an integrated 3.2 megapixel camera, 1 GB of onboard memory (along with expandable microSD storage), Bluetooth, and an integrated GPS unit. The Storm also features an accelerometer so the unit can automatically switch between portrait and landscape more, and offers RIM’s SureType keyboard in portrait mode and a full “virtual” QWERTY keyboard layout for messaging needs in landscape mode.

The Storm is also taking solid aim at the consumer space, offering a media player that handles full-screen movies, a music player (including popular EQ presets), support for streaming audio and video, support for popular social networking services, and an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts backlighting. For the business users, the Storm offers BlackBerry Internet service (complete with a full HTML browser), personal and corporate email support, and the ability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents right on the handset.

RIM plans to announce more details on pricing and availability “in the coming weeks.”

Although Apple’s iPhone is the darling of the smartphone industry, RIM has also been seeing considerable success with its more consumer-oriented models. However, the company also sees narrower margins on consumer smartphones, putting the company in a position where it has to increase sales in order to maintain revenue. So far, that hasn’t been much of a problem, and with devices like the BlackBerry Storm aping some of the iPhone’s key features while sticking with BlackBerry’s traditional strengths, the company may have a winner on its hands—recession or no.

Geoff Duncan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…
Classic BlackBerries are finally losing suppport as company shuts down services
BlackBerry Key2. Credits: BlackBerry official.

After kickstarting the smartphone era, BlackBerry's classic devices and services are finally shutting down. No, not the Android-powered modern BlackBerries such as the KeyOne, Key2, and Key2 LE, but anything that ran a BlackBerry-branded operating system. Whether this is a classic QWERTY keyboard powered by BlackBerry 7, or the iPhone-inspired BlackBerry 10, or even the forgotten BlackBerry PlayBook OS -- it's all shutting down this month.
"As another milestone in the BlackBerry journey, we will be taking steps to decommission the legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1, and earlier versions, with an end of life or termination date of January 4, 2022," the company announced. "As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS, and 911 functionality. We have chosen to extend our service until then as an expression of thanks to our loyal partners and customers."
BlackBerry bids farewell to its longtime customers. Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends
It's the end of an era for what was once a distinguished product that defined the market a decade ago. Even predating iMessage, the BlackBerry instant messaging service -- BBM -- was a great selling point for the product line. As iOS, Android, and WhatsApp began to dominate, BlackBerry devices began to fall by the wayside.
The company tried to rejuvenate its smartphone business by launching its own touchscreen phones and later its own operating system in 2013, but had little success. Unable to keep up,ity stopped the creation of smartphones in 2016 and licensed services to TCL Ltd. between 2016 to 2020. BlackBerry promised to launch a smartphone by the end of 2021 in partnership with OnwardMobility, but that hasn't panned out. 
The company has now shifted its focus to selling software. It briefly had a nostalgia-fueled increase in its share price this year, which later nearly returned to its original price. While the market has been saturated with multiple companies claiming a stake in the smartphone pie, hopefully, BlackBerry manages to return to some form of relevance with its current partnership. 

Read more
BlackBerry rises from the grave: New 5G phone with a keyboard coming in 2021
BlackBerry Key2. Credits: BlackBerry official.

BlackBerry is the smartphone brand that steadfastly refuses to die. The presumed-dead name has been resurrected once again, this time by a new company called OnwardMobility. It will work with manufacturer FIH Mobile to create and sell a 5G BlackBerry Android phone with a physical keyboard, ready for a potential release in the U.S. and Europe during the first half of 2021.

You read that right: A new BlackBerry phone with a physical keyboard and 5G, running Google’s Android software, is coming next year. TCL Communications was the last company to produce BlackBerry smartphones. It did so under license from BlackBerry Ltd., which continues to provide mobile security services, but isn’t in the hardware business anymore. TCL let its license lapse in February 2020 when modern, Android-based BlackBerry phones became a thing of the past. Until now.

Read more
OnePlus may launch a compact flagship smartphone
Close-up of the OnePlus logo on the OnePlus 13R.

OnePlus may be planning to release another entry into its OnePlus 13 range, and it may be substantially different to other mainstream smartphones. It’s potentially going to be called the OnePlus 13 Mini, and as the name suggests, it’ll be smaller than the OnePlus 13 and OnePlus 13R already available. Is interest in the "compact flagship smartphone" about to see (another) resurgence?

The latest about the unreleased phone concerns the camera, which will apparently feature two 50-megapixel sensors, arranged in a vertical “bar” module on the back of the phone. The main 50MP camera is likely to be joined by a 50MP telephoto for a 2x optical zoom. This comes from the Digital Chat Station Weibo account, a well-known source of information on unreleased mobile devices.

Read more