BlackBerry Storm owners had to put up with a lot of shortcomings in their touchscreen smartphone, but the mobile email king is hoping to put many of those complaints to rest with the upcoming Storm 2, and even have a crack at the iPhone 3GS at the same time. Check the video for the lowdown on the Storm 2’s brand new screen and read on for the skinny.
The original BlackBerry Storm’s curious screen click drew fire for its unintuitive design, especially the fact that clicking the screen itself was found to be slower than merely jabbing away at it as you would on an iPhone. But BlackBerry hasn’t let those early teething problems deter its plans for screen haptics (the vibration feedback that mimics a real button press) and it has tooled up with even more advanced technology to make it happen.
The BlackBerry Storm 2 has dropped the screen button completely, opting instead for ‘piezo technology’. This means that there’s spongy layer under the screen that stiffens when there’s no power going to it, so you get a button-like feel when the Storm 2 is powered up, but a rigid feeling when it’s off.
On top of that, the screen can detect where exactly you have pressed, unlike the original which only knew that you had clicked or had not clicked.
Add to that the streamlined design and the inclusion of WiFi as standard and BlackBerry may have found its iPhone killer at last, but we won’t know for sure until we get our hands on it. At the moment, October looks to be the most likely launch window.
Out TBC | £TBC | RIM (via Engadget)
