Blackberry’s Storm set to rain on iPhone’s parade E-mail
by Alex Zaharov-Reutt   
Wednesday, 08 October 2008
“Exclusively” coming to Verizon in the US, and Vodafone in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand, BlackBerry’s very iPhone-esque Storm promises the Blackberry’s unparalleled email experience, “world first” “click” feedback on a touch screen, cut and paste, multi-touch amongst other iPhone-beating and matching features designed to make the iPhone’s outlook cloudy. Should Apple get out its umbrella?

A quick peek at my weather barometer shows storm clouds are gathering over the horizon for the world’s existing touch screen phones, all courtesy of the world’s other fruity company of note, BlackBerry.

Of course BlackBerry is really RIM, or Research in Motion, a Canadian company that delivers the best and most customisable email experience on a handheld device, far outclassing the iPhone’s email capabilities and better than the rest, with BlackBerry and its grip on enterprise email a prize that all its competitors a would love to claim for themselves.

Although competitors undoubtedly work to deliver better email interfaces for everyone from their respective handheld devices, BlackBerry’s various physical-keyboard equipped models have remained very popular, with the BlackBerry Bold delivering the best BlackBerry experience yet, in 3G to boot.

But soon the 3.25-inch touch-screen Storm will come to those who want the full-screen experience on a BlackBerry, and clearly, the iPhone has set some very high standards, most of which the Storm is very clearly trying to match and outright beat. 

First and foremost is multi-touch technology, something no other phone has claimed as yet, although it is a feature of Microsoft’s “Surface” computer and is promised for Windows 7 if your device has a multi-touch capable display.

Gizmodo, via the Boy Genius Report, has a screenshot of the BlackBerry user guide that explains one scenario for using multi-touch, which is for cut, copy and pasting, the feature the iPhone is missing.

To perform a copy or cut action using multitouch, the user guide states: "Put two fingers on the screen simultaneously to highlight text between the touches. To adjust the start of the highlight, touch and drag at the top. To adjust the end of the highlight, touch and drag at the botton.

"To copy text, click in the middle of the highlighted text - this opens a menu with the Copy option, or press the Menu key and select Copy".

That's it for now, no-one else online who has actually used the Storm for any length of time can confirm whether multi-touch can be used to pinch or zoom photos or web pages, so as Gizmodo notes, we're hoping to hear that multi-touch can be used for more than just copy and paste.

Another important feature is what you’re multi-touching on – the screen, with BlackBerry including a unique twist that no-one has ever thought of before... Please read on to page 2 for info on what else makes the Storm potentially the most deserving of the iPhone-killer title yet!



 
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