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Leaked Official RIM Announcement of the BlackBerry Storm

by Ronen Halevy on Sep 29th, 2008 at 7:20 am EST
10 Comments »
 

One of our secret agents picked up this official announcement via the PartnerZone and felt it was needed to share it with all of you:

The upcoming BlackBerry® Storm™ is the first touch screen BlackBerry smartphone from Research In Motion and it builds upon a variety of existing BlackBerry features and capabilities to produce a truly compelling touch experience.  With the BlackBerry Storm, RIM will introduce a version of software (v4.7) that delivers a new set of APIs and capabilities for third party developers including:

1)   Enhancements to the existing RIM User Interface APIs to provide support for touch and gestures including proper handling of multi-touch events.
2)   Support for MIDP applications that leverage touch.
3)   Virtual keyboard APIs
4)   Enhanced and open GPS APIs on all networks

In addition to the new API capabilities, your Browser-based applications will build upon the browser capabilities released in v4.6.0 including:
For third party developers, one of the unique features of the BlackBerry Storm is its compatibility mode which provides an operating environment for existing 3rd party applications that are not implemented to support touch.  This feature will automatically convert the touch events into existing trackball events.  When an application is executing in compatibility mode, a virtual keyboard will be shown at all times for text input to mimic the physical keyboard on previous devices and will only support portrait mode.

  • Improved web page rendering including AJAX
  • XMLHttpRequest
  • JavaScript® 1.5
  • CSS 2.1
  • DOM L2 (including Core, HTML, Style, Events)
  • HTML 4.01 (including Forms, Maps, Tables, Frames, Objects)
  • Improved Native Attachment Download
  • Support for downloading files via the browser

Key Features
- Screen Resolution: 480×360
- Virtual Keyboard: SureType (Portrait Mode) and Full Keyboard (Landscape Mode)
- Networking: Global network support (2G/3G)
- Memory: Embedded Memory

For all BlackBerry Alliance partners, RIM will be providing access to developer documentation, the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE) v4.7 and the BlackBerry Storm simulator in October to enable development and testing of your applications on this new and compelling smartphone.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 29th, 2008 and is filed under 9500 Storm, News.
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10 Comments to “Leaked Official RIM Announcement of the BlackBerry Storm”

  1. Posted by: DavidB
    September 29, 2008 at 9:38 am EST

    The big news in MY mind is “Enhanced and open GPS APIs on all networks”. Since the NA carriers that we believe will be carrying the Storm are notorious for their blocking of access to true GPS location, this is indeed good news (if true. Perhaps would indicate that RIM finally got some balls between it’s legs and stood up to carriers restricting application access to the hardware they build?

  2. Posted by: DavidB
    September 29, 2008 at 11:11 am EST

    There’s something I just thought about on this OS4.7 topic that had me wondering. With no firm indication that OS4.5 is coming to Verizon Blackberry smartphones, I speculate if perhaps Verizon might be skipping OS4.5 for “recent” devices and with the impending release of Storm with OS4.7 is instead doing carrier cert just on OS4.7? It would seem to me to make sense that rather than roll out OS4.5 and then have OS4.7 hit for the 9530 in November, maybe for support consistency Verizon might want only one OS for 8xxx/9xxx devices? Verizon currently supports OS4.0 on 6750 and 7750, OS4.1 on 7250, OS4.2 on 7130e and 8703e and 8830, and OS4.3 on 8130 and 8330. Thoughts?

  3. Posted by: Brian
    September 30, 2008 at 7:49 pm EST

    David, 4.7 was created for touch screen devices, so if VZW gets the bold or the new Pel (Kickstart) at some point those devices will have 4.5. If the Storm is the only next gen device VZW gets (unlikely) then you are right. As Kick A$$ as the Bold is supposed to be I can’t imagine then not making a cdma version of it at some point even if it is next year.