Research In Motion (RIM) has revealed some much expected information concerning their new gadget the BlackBerry Storm, which promises to sweep users off their feet and also make the iPhone lose face with customers.

The device, with an almost all-touch interface, comes fitted with a big surprise button: its own screen, which can itself be clicked in order to confirm an action.

The innovative feature is called Click-Through technology, the phone’s screen being a fifth button, adding to the BlackBerry’s traditional ones: the red one for ending calls, the green one for access to the device’s functions and for confirming making or taking a call, the one for accessing the menus and the return button.

Verizon Wireless, the BlackBerry Storm’s carrier, has informed that the 3G handset would be available in due time for the up-coming holiday season, leaving both the price and a shipping date yet to be revealed.

Other features of RIM’s new product include support for assisted and standard GPS, Bluetooth, a 3.2-megapixel camera with 2X digital zoom, video-capture support, autoflash and autofocus and a MicroSD slot.

Moreover, it is said to support the carrier’s EV-DO Rev A network, a wireless broadband service, along with other high-speed GSM networks throughout the world.

As for its measurements, the new BlackBerry is both shorter and thicker than Apple’s iPhone, with a 4.4 inches length and a 0.55 inch width. The gadget’s 360-by-480 resolution touch-screen measures 3.25 inches, which makes it 0.25 inch smaller than the iPhone’s one.

Weighing approximately 5.5 ounces (about 0.8 ounce more than Apple’s device), the BlackBerry Storm has quad-band EDGE, being capable of carrying radios for both Verizon Wireless’ CDMA/EV-DO technology and for other networks’ GSM/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA ones.

RIM’s phone also comes with an 8GB MicroSD card, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an external microphone on the back of the device, which is said to improve the quality of voice calls via the built-in noise reduction technology, and an accelerometer.

Nevertheless, the Storm’s most exciting feature seems to be the touch interface, where typing is concerned. The gadget offers users three software keyboards: one for landscape mode, one for portrait mode and the phone’s standard keyboard.

When in landscape orientation, a QWERTY software keyboard enables users to input text, while in portrait mode, the latter can choose between a standard keypad and the one resembling the keypad RIM’s BlackBerry Pearl is fitted with (which consists of twenty keys that have one or two characters on them).

BlackBerry further features visual voicemail, which is also called Random Access Voicemail and allows users to listen to their messages in the order they choose to, support for corporate e-mails enabled by the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and instant messaging tools.

Waterloo-headquartered Research In Motion is a Canadian wireless device company, best known for their BlackBerry phones. Released in 2002, the device supported internet faxing, web browsing and text messaging.

The number of BlackBerry subscribers has been estimated at approximately 14 million earlier this year.