Everything you ever wanted to know about the Blackberry Storm

It's been the worst kept secret to hit Phone World since the iPhone, but after literally months of speculation, the Blackberry Storm (nee Thunder) has landed. And it's looking pretty, pretty, pretty good.

The Looks
The Storm doesn't wow on first glance, as the hard keys and the thickness prevent it from entering the Gallery of Classic Design. But, the screen is bright and at 480x360, it's great for watching movies and navigating websites.

The Interface
This is different, and pretty cool. Rather than being a full-on touchscreen, you use touch to navigate around the screen. Then, when you want to select something, you press down on the screen. Since the screen is held above the main body of the phone by less than a millimetre, you can feel the depression of the screen, and selecting something becomes less of an exercise in hit-and-miss and more of a physical act. It's a bit like real-life haptics. RIM are calling this ClickThru (or ClickThrough - they haven't quite decided!).

As far as navigating the menus is concerned, there's the soft keys along the bottom of the main screen, which are customisable by the user, as in all Blackberry's. So, if you're a heavy Twitter user, you can have Twitter on the main screen. There's also a expanded menu screen, which holds dedicated apps like Flickr and Facebook, as well as folders and files. As you can see from the photo, there's also the make call, end call, back and menu hard keys.

Typing wise, holding the phone in portait mode will get you the SureType input seen on the Pearl, whilst holding it in landscape converts it to a QWERTY keyboard.

And yes, there is Cut & Paste. Hallelujah.

Applications
RIM are launching the SDK today, in the hope that all those who have already made dedicated apps for the non-touchscreen Blackberry's will adapt their programs for the Storm. Whether we'll see the same pick-up of the SDK as witnessed in Apple's App Store remains to be seen. Having said that, the SDK has been available to Google, Vodafone (including their music biz), YouTube and Telemap, and the resulting applications will be available from launch.

Media
This phone is aimed at a market RIM has never addressed previously - those who look for the latest in functionality, with less of an emphasis on email than the previous business clients. The resulting media playback is evident. There's 1GB of internal memory, which can be expanded via the MicroSD card slot (under the battery cover - why do they DO that??). There's also dedicated volume buttons on the side of the phone, which can also be used to control skipping tracks. Watching movies on the screen is a pleasure.

Camera-wise, there's a 3.2 megapixel offering with flash and autofocus, as well as 30 fps video playback.

Battery Life
It's quoted at 6 hours talktime, which is slightly more than Apple's 3G iPhone quote. In real life, the people at RIM are sure that even heavy users shouldn't need to charge more than once a day, with less demanding users getting two days use. Practically speaking, one of the phones that had been used throughout the day to demonstrate the product when I saw it was only down two battery bars out of (I think) five.

Pricing
This isn't a phone for the commitment-phobes. It's exclusively available on Vodafone (who will be the only carrier foreva) and they will tie you into a 24 month contract. Ouch. Having said that, the pricing itself is relatively reasonable: it'll be free on a 35 pound contract. Launch date is an unconfirmed 'well in time for Christmas'.

And in conclusion...
It's a really nice phone. It impresses in most areas (you can hold down the name of a contact on an email and it will automatically search for all emails by that contact) but perhaps under-delivers in the style-stakes when held up against the iPhone. There's also the issue of the two year contract - RIM has promised that the phone will stand up to 24 months of wear and tear, but can you commit yourself to the same handset in that amount of time? Who knows - by October 2010, we might all be able to make phone calls in our heads.