BlackBerry Storm to hit New Zealand December 1

RIM's BlackBerry Storm will be released in New Zealand December 1, a Vodafone insider confirms for NBR.

Indicative pricing is $999, or less depending on plan.

Storm's huge touch-screen revolutionises the BlackBerry, positioning it to go head-to-head with Apple's iPhone 3G - which has been chipping away at RIM's business market (and moving ahead in the retail market, where iPhone recently topped the US quarterly sales charts, selling 6.9 million handsets to BlackBerry's 6.8 million).

The US carrier Verizon Wireless will become the first telco in the world to release the Storm, it was announced yesterday. The handset will be priced at $US250 (or $US200 with a rebate) if a customer signs up for a two-year contract.

Verizon, the second largest mobile operator in the US, is 45% owned by Vodafone, 55% by Verizon. For the time being Vodafone and Verizon Wireless have worldwide exclusivity on the Storm, locking out Telecom NZ.

Ironically, the BlackBerry Storm will run on Verizon Wireless's EVDO Rev A network in the US. That is, the same technology as Telecom's current mobile network.

But the US iteration of the Storm will also support WCDMA for roaming (that is, Vodafone NZ's current network standard, and the one being used for Telecom's new network, due to launch June 2009) and will run on that standard for the phone's international release.

Storm vs iPhone
While fractionally thicker than Apple's iPhone 3G, the Storm looks as stylish, and feels more robust. It also adds several features the iPhone lacks, including photo messaging, the ability to shoot video, cut-and-paste and a full HTML browser.

But wi-fi - supported by the iPhone - is conspicuously absent from the Storm. RIM says wireless ethernet sucks too much battery life. Bluetooth is supported.

And while the Storm will support touch commands, it doesn't have iPhone's mulitouch approach to multimedia (although some sites say the cut-and-paste will involve a two-finger approach; definitive answers when a review unit arrives at NBR towers next week).

The Storm will also be the second phone - after Samsung's Soul - to support a so-called "haptic" interface. that is, the screen will give a slight tactile buzz when you, say, tap a URL to follow a web link.

The jury has yet to weigh in on a central feature, Click-Through, which turns the Storm's entire screen into a kind of giant mouse button, which has to be clicked to confirm every command. RIM says the feature will avoid mis-taps, which it says is a bane for iPhone users.

Read more about Storm's techs and specs, compared to iPhone, here.
A 360 degree tour is on Verizon Wireless's site here.