Vodafone and Research In Motion announced today the latest development in mobile handheld devices, namely the newest BlackBerry Storm2 smartphone. This is a well planned release I see, as the busy holiday shopping period is coming up. Being the second generation of RIM's innovative touchscreen smartphone, the BlackBerry Storm2 significantly enhances the BlackBerry touchscreen platform with both new technologies and features to provide customers with a means of easily staying connected to the people, places and things that matter most to them.

Not only hardware, but also software enhancements: the BlackBerry Storm2 upgrades to BlackBerry OS5 that evolves the touchscreen platform. This smartphone introduces a new SurePress technology - based on an electronic system that provides the user with tactile feedback when the screen is pressed. Actually, the technology is not new, but merely sporting a different name. We have already seen the MX-5000 remote control that featured tactile feedback, also known as haptics. The technology itself can be further enhanced, but that's not the subject of this article.

The Storm2 has a 3.25-inch dazzling and high resolution 360 x 480 screen with 184dpi. Featuring a capacitive touchscreen with integrated function like send, end, menu, escape and the SurePress technology, the Storm2 offers users effortless display clicking. As for connectivity, the smartphone is completely UMTS/HSPA, quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM and Wi-Fi enabled throughout the networks.

The built-in digital camera boasts a 3.2-megapixel resolution, variable zoom, autofocus, as well as LED flash and video recording. The Flash memory of the Storm2 is 256 MB, while for storage, users are provided with 2GB of onboard memory and a microSD/SDHC memory card slot that supports a maximum of 16GB, but might as well support 32GB too.


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