RIM decided to go calculator black with its touchscreen keyboard on the BlackBerry Thunder. Their first ever touchscreen phone, the Thunder looks to be a sure winner for RIM. It’s also the first touchscreen smartphone with a QWERTY much unlike the iPhone QWERTY. Even more interesting, the keyboard has two orientations. Yes, you can type on the SureType keyboard with the phone in upright or portrait mode. It’s amazing!
The BlackBerry Thunder’s keyboard also uses Haptics, which gives users tactile response when pressing the keys. From the photos alone, you could see where RIM wants to go with this. They want the virtual keyboard to give Crackberrys the same experience they’ve had on the real tactile keys on previous BlackBerry models. The touch screen is glass and the UI is multi-touch. Thunder is a true enterprise phone with Copy/Paste, Spell Check, Save Draft and Attach File commands on the menu. There’s nothing left to say, really except that RIM has done it and there is at least one handset manufacturer safe from the iPhone’s all-consuming popularity.
The portrait mode after the break.
July 14th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Swing-and-a-miss. If this phone were really as great as you seem to think it will be, RIM would’ve announced it by now. Most people don’t read gadget sites, and if you don’t tell them something is coming they’ll buy something else, such as the iPhone, the Instinct, or the already announced BlackBerry Bold. The Thunder better be enterprise-friendly, because there won’t be many consumers left by then.
FYI, the Instinct looks like much less of an iPhone-killer after the iPhone’s 1 million units sold over the weekend and Sprint’s refusal to offer actual Instinct sales figures. I guess consumers “didn’t believe the hype” and bought the iPhone instead.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:12 am
no buddy, swing-and-a-hit… I have an iPhone and I would give it up and switch networks for that beauty in a second
September 16th, 2008 at 5:07 am
[...] folks is the much anticipated BlackBerry Storm. Formerly known as the BlackBerry Thunder, it is RIMs first full touchscreen-enabled device with only a select number of control buttons [...]