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Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Why Are RIM Over Complicating The Touchscreen Blackberry?

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In recent years Blackberry have produced the Blackberry Storm and Storm 2, both sporting a large touchscreen with SurePress technology. There can be little doubt that this device is inspired by Apple's very successful iPhone but in making the Storm similar to iPhone's design I feel that RIM may have missed a great design opportunity. Find out why after the jump.










If you look at the Bold 9700 and the iPhone when the keyboard is displayed then you'll notice that the display area is exactly the same. The icons used in the Bold OS would be very easy to press with a thumb of finger if that was possible......why isn't it? Why not simply make the Bold screen touch sensitive. Keep the physical keyboard for typing and, like Android devices, keep the trackball but allow people to select icons and move around text input using touch. Just think about using your Blackberry and discovering a typo earlier in your email. You simply touch the screen and the cursor moves to that point on the screen where you can make the change then touch the end of the message and continue typing on the physical keyboard.

Wouldn't this unite the great physical keyboards of the Blackberry with the strengths of the touch screen devices into one fantastic device. There is room in the Blackberry fold for such a hybrid device and I for one would be delighted to purchase it if it ever came on the market. Anyone agree that this is the kind of device we need to see from RIM?

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Tuesday, 25 November 2008

BlackBerry Storm Improvements

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There are certainly improvements that need to go into this phone to make it an iPhone killer. There are two that come to mind for me. The first is the OS. There is no doubt that the OS is slow and buggy. I had to remove the battery today to fix a scrolling issue. This needs to be fixed with an update ASAP. It’s easy to do though and I expect to see an update within the next few weeks.

The second is an addition that BlackBerry need to consider. The user should be able to type without having to press the button down. Pressing the button/screen should be for selection only. The ability to type by just touching the screen would sort out the typing speed issues and I would be confident in saying would bring users from other touch screen smartphones over to the Storm. I’s guessing it would also be an easy addition considering the menu navigation is done by light touch. Even putting this as a keyboard option would be great, for each of the keyboards of course. So please RIM implement these two suggestions. I really want to love this phone.

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Thursday, 2 October 2008

Nokia's First Touch Phone Launched

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As I said they would Nokia have launched their first touch screen phone today. It's called the Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic and it's a stunner. Engadget has a review here. This phone is being pushed as a media device more than a smartphone but it appears to hit this bar easily. The beautiful screen should be fantastic for watching video. Coming hot on the heals of the powerful N96 the 5800 has much to do but if this is basically the entry level Nokia touch phone I can't wait to see what's still to come.

Will I buy it though? Well I'll be able to answer that by the end of the month. As far as I'm concerned there's currently 4 phones I'm interested in, iPhone, N96, 5800 and Blackberry Storm. Of them all the Storm is the most interesting and if it manages to be as good as I think it will then this will be my new phone. While there's no release date at the moment my guess is a release on the 1st November on Vodafone in the UK. It's a great time to be looking for a new phone and for anyone who loves music and media in general then the 5800 is a phone they should certainly look at.

The 5800 is available through the Carphone Warehouse in the UK.

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