Technology Development

It is being reported that the BlackBerry Storm3 is in its final stages of completion. The rumor is that the Storm3 will be ready this year (2010) by Q3 or Q4. It is said that the Storm3 will still include the SurePress touchscreen as its predecessors, however, the new revision is supposed to be "perfect". We reported some time ago that RIM was working on the Storm3 with two model types: normal candy bar touch screen and one with a slide out full-qwerty keyboard. Once we saw the Slider 9800, we were unsure whether or not the Slider 9800 was a version of the Storm3 prototype.




Of course, it is clear now that the Slider 9800 is going to be a new Bold. Just as we heard before in our earlier report, RIM has scrapped the slide-out keyboard on the Storm series. The Storm3 will include BlackBerry 6 and is said to be with a strong emphasis on multimedia and gaming. It is said that EA and RIM are working closely to include The Sims pre-installed on the Storm3.



We know it isn't unusual for RIM to work on a next-gen version of a device before the next-gen's predecessor device is even released. There is a new rumor regarding the building of a Storm4. It is supposed to released in 2011 and supposedly called an "iPhone killer", which we've heard many times before. The Storm4 is said to include the usual accelerometer and also a magnetometer, which will make the Storm4 a true compass. It is rumored to have a 5MP camera, upgraded GPS hardware, and speculated could support augmented reality applications, which could position RIM in a new untapped AR market.



It will be interesting to see if any of this comes to fruition. Everyone knows very little about the upcoming Storm3 (we're even codename-less). We're certain that the Slider 9800 will receive BlackBerry 6 first, thus a Q4 release for the Storm3 makes sense. Hopefully we will soon see more info arise on the Storm3 and 4, including images of the device.



While the Storm series has suffered much hype with very poor performance results, there is still a large base of Storm fans. If the Storm3 or 4 have nailed out all of the bugs and the SurePress touchscreen technology is very much improved to be perfect, will this impact you?