RIM preps touchscreen BlackBerry?

The just-launched BlackBerry Bold 9000 is enjoying the spotlight at this week’s annual BlackBerry lovefest in Orlando, but there’s also a bit of buzz on the floor that another two souped-up smartphones are in the wings – and both have the iPhone in their sights.

Rumours of a touch-screen BlackBerry are nothing new: they’ve been flying around since late last year, spurred on by the phenomenal success of Apple’s iPhone and the revelation in February of RIM’s own patent for both a touch-centric BlackBerry UI and a dual-mode handset which would perch a keypad under a tilting touchscreen.

Now we’re hearing whispers that RIM’s skunkworks are working on both of those products, under the codenames of Storm for the dual-mode device and Thunder for the handset bearing a super-sized touchscreen.

The dual-input BlackBerry was first detailed in RIM’s patent application, which featured sketches of two concept models: one with the traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a second with the SureType keypad popularised on the Pearl series. Crackberry.com has ‘Storm’ as the codename for this hybrid handheld, while BoyGeniusReport reveals ‘Thunder’ as the full-touch device with only four keys on the front panel – send/end for phone calls, the ‘back’ key and the BlackBerry menu key. Both products are rumoured for a Q3 release.

RIM has been at once cautious and coy about touchscreen. During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, RIM's co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie (yes, we agree that the ‘co-CEO’ bit is rather odd) confirmed that “we’re looking at all kinds of different device packaging and presentation” (for ‘packaging’ read ‘touchscreen UI’ rather than ‘the cardboard box which the smartphone comes in’). But he warned that “getting religious on packaging is not the way to go... it’s really user preference-oriented.”

Speaking with APCmag.com at this week’s Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, RIM’s Vice President of Product Marketing Mike McAndrews declined to rule out the possibility of a touchscreen BlackBerry, but remained firm that a keyboard was the cornerstone of the BlackBerry experience for most current users. “The iPhone has raised awareness of touchscreen capabilities, and we look at lots of different technologies. But we believe that a lot of our user base are people who do quite a bit of messaging – that’s where we came from, that’s our heritage – and so we put a lot of design into the keyboards, it’s really one of our key competitive advantages.”

McAndrews also denied assertions that some aspects of the BlackBerry Bold 9000’s shape and design borrow from the iPhone. “We’ve been this industrial design well before the iPhone was announced” he told APCmag.com, “so there was no desire on our part to look the same. It was more  a matter of two companies working in a similar space, two leading edge designs which were trying to bring out a lot of modern industrial design techniques and attributes, and we both ended up in this space.”

David Flynn is attending the WES in Orlando, Florida as a guest of RIM.