The release of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Storm was received with mixed reactions. The company set the standards extremely high with its previous three models: the Pearl, the Bold and the Flip. RIM decided to move to a new segment and catch a piece of the smartphone market’s touchscreen segment.

Even though the expectations were high, the device seems to be less than people anticipated. First of all, many believe that the BlackBerry loses most of its appeal with the touchscreen, as one of its defining features is the thumb keyboard. Looking to make the transition easier, RIM developed a feature to make the screen act like a mouse: if a user presses the screen hard enough, it responds with a click. Users can either touch the screen lightly or firmly depending on the wanted feedback.

Still, there are several issues with the on-screen keyboard. The phone, through its tilt sensor, offers the full Qwerty keyboard when the device is held horizontally and the SureType keyboard when the phone is turned upright, which is anything but sure when it comes to guessing the words users intend to write. Each key has two letters on it, making it difficult for certain words, and especially for Web addresses and unfamiliar last names.

There are also many who complain about the Storm’s delayed reactions. Scrolling lists of phone numbers or messages quickly gets rather irritating, as the phone takes quite a while to identify the command and begin the action. Also, when the phone is turned by 90 degrees, the switch takes a few second to complete, as does a program once it is selected.

Still, the smartphone has its strong points, running on Verizon’s cell phone network and offering a clear and loud call reception. It also provides voice dialing, copy-and-paste, programmable side buttons, removable battery and a standard headphone jack. Users can open and also edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments, ensuring that corporate users can enjoy their highly needed features, promoted by the company’s other devices. The phone is delivered with an 8 Giga Bytes memory card; the camera offers a very good flash, a stabilizer and 2X zoom, also allowing video recordings; the full HTML Web browser is widely considered the best one BlackBerry ever had, using the simple double-tap to zoom and finger drag to scroll. The navigation page has the address bar, Google search bar, bookmarks and browsing history all accessible on one page.

The company made a great effort to release three different models in two months, each one with its own software edition, and this might have also contributed to the public’s reaction, which might have expected something else, or exactly this format, but completed in a different manner.

To conclude the presentation, the Storm is likely to appeal to users who haven’t used a BlackBerry phone before, as the others are very likely to compare it to their older devices and conclude that the old features were faster and better.