Apple changed the way people thought about touchscreen phones when it introduced the first iPhone back in 2007. The thought of navigating a touchscreen using only human fingers was basically unheard of. At the time, touchscreen phones mostly used styli/styluses to navigate mostly resistive touchscreens which were not exactly very responsive. As such, the response to the iPhone was phenomenal, and soon after, every other phone maker began to make their own touchscreen phones.
RIM though looked like it was not going to join the party, because well, their devices were popular for their amazing QWERTY keyboards, and why should they abandon what made them popular, right?
Well, RIM thought differently, which led to the introduction of the BlackBerry 9530, also known as the BlackBerry Storm.
The Storm is RIM’s first touch-only device, and it features RIM’s surepress technology. What it does is provide feedback to the user that the ‘button’ has been pressed by physically clicking. Think about the entire screen of the Storm as one big button, and you’ll get the idea.
RIM hopes this novel approach to touchscreen technology that provides feedback to the user will be enough for it to take some market share away from the iPhone, and other competetitors such as the T-Mobile G1, and HTC’s Touch family of devices.