NY Times reports the first sign of trouble with the new phone was the concept: a touch-screen BlackBerry. That's right — in its zeal to cash in on some of that iPhone touch-screen mania, RIMM has created a BlackBerry without a physical keyboard. Hello? Isn't the thumb keyboard the defining feature of a BlackBerry? A BlackBerry without a keyboard is like an iPod without a scroll wheel. A Prius with terrible mileage. Cracker Jack without a prize inside. R.I.M. hoped to soften the blow by endowing its touch screen with something extra: clickiness. The entire screen acts like a mouse button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little plastic click. As a result, the Storm offers two degrees of touchiness. You can tap the screen lightly, or you can press firmly to register the palpable click. It's not a bad idea. In fact, it ought to make the on-screen keyboard feel more like actual keys. In principle, you could design a brilliant operating system where the two kinds of taps do two different things. Tap lightly to type a letter — click fully to get a pop-up menu of accented character. Tap lightly to open something, click fully to open a shortcut menu of options. And so on. Unfortunately, RIMM's execution is inconsistent and confusing.
Learn more about trading RIMM