After numerous leaks, Research in Motion (RIM) finally announced the Blackberry 9500. It will be exclusively sold by Verizon in US, Vodafone in Europe & Telus in Canada. After the final specs were released a notable omission is the lack of Wi-fi in the Storm. That seems to be a big mistake on part of Blackberry to make an iPhone rival Touch Screen Smartphone without Wi-fi functionality. In present times, Wi-fi has become a must in High-end Smartphones & RIM's decision to not pack the 9500 with Wi-fi could hurt it in 9500's sales. Especially when Nokia has started to put Wi-fi in all of it's new N-Series & E-Series phones. In Windows Mobile world, almost all phones have Wi-fi in them. The decision is also confusing as the Blackberry 9000 Bold already has Wi-fi in it.
The Blackberry Storm 9500 will be sold through Vodafone networks and will be free on monthly plans of 35 GBP and up with an 18-month contract.The Blackberry Storm 9530 is the variant of the handset that will be sold in North America through Verizon & Telus. Along with the quad-band GSM and 2100Mhz UMTS support that the 9500 model has, it will also offer CDMA2000 1xEV-DO support. The 9500 Storm will be available for purchase soon.
Detailed Specs of Blackberry 9500 Storm :
- 3 Mega Pixel Auto Focus Camera with LED Flash
- 3.3 inch Touch Screen with resolution of 360 x 480 pixels
- True Haptics
- 3.5 mm headphone jack
- 624 Mhz CPU
- 192 MB Ram
- 3G, HSDPA & GPS
- Quad Band GSM
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Video player DivX/WMV/XviD/3gp
- Media player MP3/WMA/AAC+
- DataViz Document Viewer/Editor
- Micro SD card slot
- Blackberry Maps
- Landscape virtual QWERTY keyboard
- BlackBerry OS
- 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.9 mm
Source : Research in Motion
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Some of the other extras include a built-in GPS (with A-GPS functionality), Wi-fi, microSD card slot with support for up to 8GB cards and a 3.5mm standard audio jack for plugging your own custom headphones. The 9500 Storm measures 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.9 mm and is also quite thin.
The RIM Blackberry Thunder's pics have leaked again. This shows a the lax security setup at RIM. Well we are not complaining as it enables us to see the Haptics enabled Touch Screen of the Thunder. There are speculations that the the Thunder will be renamed as Storm , looks like RIM seems to be sticking with nature on this one.
What's so great about the True Haptics in the Thunder is the response got after pressing a button is from the area which was actually pressed unlike the Pseudo Haptics in today's phones where the whole phone vibrates to acknowledge a press. The Thunder will also feature an audible clickety sound to enhance the vibrations.
