Verizon and Vodafone announce RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530 and 9500
Today Verizon Wireless and Vodafone announced their exclusive claim to being the first family of carriers to offer the new RIM BlackBerry Storm smartphones. Verizon Wireless will have exclusive rights to the BlackBerry Storm 9530 smartphone while Vodafone, one of Verizon’s parents, will claim rights to the BlackBerry Storm 9500 in Europe, India, Australia, and New Zealand. No specific launch dates have been given, but the joint press release mentions availability “later this fall.”
As the first touchscreen BlackBerry device, a lot is riding on the Storm for RIM. BlackBerry devices have always been known for their fine, usable keyboards and the devices on a whole have been the tool of choice for many people that rely on email to do business. As such, the introduction of a touchscreen on a BlackBerry is something of a risk, as touchscreens have long been considered poor when it comes to text input - and a BlackBerry is nothing without text input.
To that end, RIM is using what it calls the first “clickable” touchscreen display on the market for the Storm. RIM president Mike Lazaridis says that the Storm “solves the longstanding problem associated with typing on traditional touch-screens” by responding more like a physical keyboard. The 360×480 pixel resolution touchscreen has a certain amount of give to it, and users will feel a positive click when they press on it. On top of that, the display also supports multi-touch input and finger gestures for navigation and application control.
The touchscreen is also backed up by an accelerometer, which enables it to automatically rotate with the device. As such, RIM is able to have the Storm use a SureType 20 key virtual keypad design, similar to that of that BlackBerry Pearl, when the phone is held vertically while offering a full QWERTY layout when used in landscape mode. The auto-rotation also helps when used with the web browser, which has a row of buttons across the bottom of the screen that allow users to switch between page and single column modes as well as control whether the user’s finger controls the mouse pointer or is used for panning and scrolling. Another feature of the browser that people will appreciate is the double-tap zoom control, like that found on the iPhone and in Opera’s 9.5 browser for devices like the HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung i900 Omnia.
And since RIM knows just how important text is to a BlackBerry user, the Storm also supports copy and paste functionality. We don’t have a lot of other details on the phone yet, but we do know that there will be GPS support for navigation, and that the browser can handle RSS feeds. A 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus is on board, backed up by special versions of Flickr and Facebook, and Bluetooth stereo support is there along with a regular 3.5mm headphone jack socket.
The RIM BlackBerry Storm 9500 for Vodafone will support 3G UMTS(INFO) and HSPA(INFO) data on the 2100MHz band as well as quad-band GSM/EDGE. The Verizon version goes a step further by offering all of the network support of the 9500 as well as EV-DO Rev A(INFO). support for Verizon’s 3G network for true dual-mode(INFO) 3G world roaming. It measures about 112.5mm x 62.2mm x 14.0mm (4.4″ x 2.4″ x .5″) in size and weighs about 155g (5.5oz). It offers 1GB of internal storage space and supports microSD cards as large as 16GB in capacity.
We still don’t have any word on pricing or availability for the new Storm line, but we are certainly anxious to get our hands on one to test out that new touchscreen.
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