Today, RIMM released its new BlackBerry Storm smartphone. This is their first phone to elminate the physical keyboard. The initial reviews are the Storm is different and better than Apple’s iPhone (I hope not!). Like the iPhone, the Storm uses a touchscreen. Unfortunately, the Storm cannot do finger-pinch/stretch iPhone trick of enlarging or shrinking the screen contents. But the new Storm lets you edit by cutting and pasting. No need to worry, Apple will develop its cut and paste feature on a future firmware upgrade. The Storm is a true world phone with 3G capability, but the Storm lacks Wi-Fi. The Storm has all the features you expect from any smartphone now including GPS, a video and music player, Bluetooth and a 3.2 megapixel camera. I believe the new Blackberry Storm will give Apple’s iPhone a run but will not surpass them. Believe me, Apple has developed lots of secrets for the iPhone that have not been released yet.
The BIG QUESTION: Will business users who spend time on their previous generation Blackberry keyboards be willing to switch to a touchscreen???