We’ve known about its imminent arrival for weeks, but now it’s official: Vodafone has announced the BlackBerry Storm, the first full touchscreen mobile phone from RIM, and the first touchscreen smartphone purpose built for Vodafone.
The Storm’s star feature is a tactile 3.25-inch touchscreen with a 480 x 360 resolution, Equipped with haptics (tiny vibrations every time you tap the touchscreen), the display can instantly transform to a full QWERTY keyboard that feels almost 3D to the touch.
There’s a 3.2-megapixel camera on board, along with music and video playback (the music player can even sync with iTunes), GPS with turn-by-turn satellite navigation. There’s not a great amount of storage space built in, but a memory card slot supports up to 16GB of exchangeable memory.
Web-users get rapid HDSPA download speeds, plus built-in support for social networking sites Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Flickr and other web-based services like Google Maps and Vodafone Music.
A specific release date and pricing info are yet to be confirmed, with the official Vodafone site saying only that the Storm is “launching soon”.
What you need to know
Availability: Out soon
Price: TBC
Basic specs: 3.25-inch touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, GPS
Killer feature: Crisp, clear hi-res touchscreen with haptics
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