The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Touchscreen BlackBerry 'Thunder' to storm to market in Q3?

RIM rumbles on

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Stormclouds could be forming over Research in Motion's headquarters - and for once we're not referring to the 3G iPhone. It has been claimed that the company will unveil a touchscreen BlackBerry in Q3.

Although website BGR hasn’t shared the source of this information, the website claims the device is codenamed 'Thunder' and is likely to be sold as the BlackBerry 9500.

Thunder, of which only Photoshop mock-ups are currently available, looks rather similar to the iPhone. But the RIM phone has four physical buttons just below the touchscreen: call make and break keys, another for jumping into the phone’s main menu, and a step-back button.

The touchscreen looks about the same size as the iPhone’s display – around 3.5in – but RIM’s device also has more prominent curves around the sides, top and bottom.

Few tech specs about the rumoured handset are available yet, but Thunder will almost certainly support high-speed Internet connections and be sold with regional connection capabilities, such as HSDPA in the UK. However, it has also been alleged the BlackBerry will support 4G connectivity too.

Nothing official has been released about Thunder yet, but it's rumoured the handset will be introduced on Vodafone and Verizon.

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

Latest Comments

Wahoo!!!

Ok, I really don't care about touchscreen ... but this one means the BB can fight on even ground with the iPhone! w00t!!!

Even if I dislike the Jobsphere and the current state of Apple, I do agree that the iPhone seems to have sent handset manufacturers into an innovation spree. I just hope that the 9000's will be available when my contract finishes.... which will be 'till July 2009. Plenty of time! :)

0
0

Re: Hurray

My contract ends in September, so I will be looking for this too.

0
0

IMO

I personally think BBs beat iPhones as it is, with or without a touchscreen, but then I'm more of a browser than a music man anyway. But a touchscreen BB I could easily see doing well against the iPhone and I think the sometimes understated RIM have a realistic chance of putting up a good fight, if it wanted to in the first place!

0
0

More from The Register

1,000 O2 staff chose redundancy over Capita
Betrayal, or just decent terms?
Google launches broadband balloons, radio astronomy frets
A careless Loon could blind the square kilometre array
 breaking news
Pttow! Ofcom kicks hams out of MoD bands
Geet off my land, you, you ... 'secondary user'
 breaking news
Now you can use your phone instead of your wallet at the ATM, too
Blimey, these little paper towels out of the vending machine are really expensive
 breaking news
UK.gov's £530m bumpkin broadband rollout: 'Train crash waiting to happen'
Whitehall whispers of damning watchdog report next month
 breaking news
MySpace zaps millions of teens' tearful rants, causes wave of angst
'Your crappy redesign SUCKS, I wanna read my blogs' screech users
 breaking news
Microsoft Office 365 on iPhone NOW: No, we're not making this up
Word, Excel, Powerpoint for your pocket-stroker
 breaking news
EU signs off on eCall emergency-phone-in-every-car plan
GPS and a mobe in every car - do you suppose the NSA would fancy that?