Blackberry Storm Steals Nokia Tube's Thunder In Touchscreen Showdown With Early Release

"Underpromise, Overdeliver" appears to be RIM's new motto. Research in Motion is building the momentum towards Christmas with yesterday's release of the Blackberry Storm, its first Touchscreen smartphone, in a direct hit at both Apple's iPhone and Nokia's forthcoming XpressMusic 5800.

The device - codenamed Thunder - comes with a big 3.25-inch LCD display that can display up to 65,000 colours at a resolution of 480x360 pixels and also sports a 3.5mm earphone jack as well as a microSD slot - something that the iPhone is still sorely missing.

RIM has introduced a new feature underneath the LCD display called Clickthrough that mimicks the physical feedback that a user would expect to receive on a traditional membrane keyboard, complete with the clicking sound

This makes the typing experience more responsive and accurate according to Businessweek Tech and You columnist Stephen Wildstrom who tested the Smartphone.

Vodafone will be the exclusive Network for the Storm outside the US and will make it available towards the end of the year in a host of territories - Australia, New Zealand, India and Europe.

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The Quad-band Storm comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera that doubles as a digital camcorder as well and expected to keep the same stocky format as its predecessors which, RIM could hope, will give it more allure and substance than the rest of the competition.

The Storm is expected to cost around USD 200 (GBP 120) on a two year contract.