Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, unveiled its first smartphone with a touch screen today, its answer to the popular Apple iPhone.

RIM BlackBerry Storm More Photos View Specs

The Blackberry Storm will be available later this year through Verizon Wireless in the United States and Vodafone in Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand.

The BlackBerry Storm has the world's first 'clickable' touch screen. Users feel the screen being pressed and released with a gentle click, similar to the feeling of a key on a physical keyboard or a button on a mouse. The 'clickable' touch screen gives users confirmation that they have made a selection.

The BlackBerry Storm adds support for multi-touches, taps, slides and other touch-screen gestures, so customers can easily highlight, scroll, pan and zoom for smooth navigation.

The BlackBerry Storm also features a built-in accelerometer for the touch screen to automatically switch between landscape mode and portrait. Its SureType keyboard layout is available in portrait mode and a full QWERTY keyboard layout is available in landscape mode.

It has high-speed 3G Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision A (Rev. A) technology for fast Internet browsing and multimedia applications. A full HTML browser works in either portrait or landscape orientation. Users can navigate websites with the touch screen interface, double tapping to zoom in and sliding a fingers to scroll and pan.

The browser supports file downloading, streaming audio and video (RTSP), and with its built-in RSS support, new content from supported websites can be automatically pushed to users.

Icons along the bottom of the display access websites, switching between Page View and Column View and toggle between Pan mode and Cursor mode.

It supports personal and corporate email and text (SMS), picture (MMS) and instant (IM) messaging.

"We are proud to introduce the first touch-screen based BlackBerry smartphone together with Verizon Wireless," said Mike Lazaridis, President of RIM. "The BlackBerry Storm is a revolutionary touch-screen smartphone that meets both the communications and multimedia needs of customers and solves the longstanding problem associated with typing on traditional touch-screens."

The BlackBerry Storm will be available later this fall.

- RIM BlackBerry Storm Specs

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