RIM (employee): Storm 2 with "new approach to text entry" for end 2009, early 2010
By Thomas Ricker 
posted April 8th 2009 4:50AM
posted April 8th 2009 4:50AM
Reputable Dutch site Tweakers has Alain Segond von Banchet, RIM channel sales manager according to LinkedIn, stating that the BlackBerry Storm followup is scheduled to launch at the end of the year or at the beginning of next. In addition, he has the phone coming to KPN, not Vodafone who had the first generation Storm locked-up under an exclusive deal. Interestingly enough, Mr. Segond von Banchet says that the Storm 2 (not the final name) will "offer among other things a new manner to input text" -- among other things meaning WiFi, presumably, as we heard before. Keep in mind that channel sales managers do not typically represent a company to the press. Nevertheless, what he's saying does jibe with previous rumors and we have no doubt that RIM is working hard to avoid the universal disdain that greeted the Storm's mushy, push-button touchscreen input.Update: Tweakers responded telling us that Mr. Segond von Banchet was speaking on the record for RIM because there was no one from marketing at the TeleVisie 2009 Expo yesterday.
Why they'd put a regular slide out keyboard on a touch screen phone I don't quite understand. That's really the only thing that makes sense..."changing the way to input text" wouldn't affect the button behind the screen since that's responsible for a whole lot more than just text entry. My hypothesis at least...
Touchscreen QWERTYs are horrible - I find it so much easier to use the keypad mode on my Touch HD. Combine it with predictive text and you have all the speed and ease of use we had on regular phones :)
@CREEPINJESUS,
I agree that keypads are far better than touchscreens to type on. However I find my storms touchscreen far easier to type on than any other touchscreen device I have used (including the iphone). If you want a keypad then there is the bold, if you want a bigger better screen area and the benefits that it brings then the storm is excellent. I am not a hardcore emailer so the larger screen on the storm is better for what I use it for.
You haven't tried typing on a WM phone, have you... Stylus takes forever. Ipod Touch isn't that much better, as text gets sloppy.
I'm waiting for the Pre, unless Blackberry beats it with something similar.
I still dont like it.
Storm 2 Type Harder
Calling it the number 2 is appropriate I'm sure as the present Storm is a POS .
You've probably never even used a Storm.
Yes I own one troll. It's a POS and so are you. LOL!
Just because you really wanted an iPhone and not a Storm doesn't make the Storm a POS
I have on and 3 other coworkers own Storms and we all love ours, yes there are quirks but what Gen1 phone doesn't?
Actually, without even comparing it to an iPhone it is a POS . You guys always bring up the iPhone; I wonder why? I guess there were a few people out there (like yourself) that wanted a real car but bought the Yugo instead . And even said they loved it. LOL
@TJ
are you an eight-year old boy?
grow up and stop saying LOL at the end of each sentence, we arent laughing.
It's Jesus, LOL!
With Verizon's track record this will be out July 2010.
Actually...I hear that the Storm already has a keypad built-in, but Verizon locked it down so they could charge extra for it later.
Perhaps that new text input method involves screaming at the phone. Maybe that will solve the OS sluggishness.
CNBC was reporting last week that the storm 2 will have BOTH a slide out keyboard AND touchscreen keyboard. in addition to wifi.
now if only they can get it out of verizons hands before they fock it all up.....
Where did you see that CNBC report? I looked on their website and couldn't find anything.
"universal disdain that greeted the Storm's mushy, push-button touchscreen input"
Really?? Come on.
For what its worth, I and tens of thousands of other Storm owners love the screen. I can type faster and more accurately on my Storm than on my iPod touch.
x2 I absolutely LOVE mine.
X3
Love mine too, the keyboard is great and I type much faster on it than on my old iPod touch. I agree that the OS could use some work..its slow sometimes and app world is no where near as advanced as the app store-thats just going to take time though.
Ugh, could not disagree more! I have both an iPod Touch and a Storm, and I can absolutely FLY on my iPod, not so much on the Storm. The QWERTY keyboard has small keys (not really small, but the fact that you have to use the long part of your thumb to hit the keys in order to hold the phone comfortably, and it makes it hard to be accurate. Maybe a personal problem? Probably.). The SureType mode I loved at first, and thought I would slowly get faster at it..... but no. The drop-down suggestion menus are difficult to move around in, and it's almost impossible to know where the symbol you want is when there's 4 freaking pages of them! The phone was horribly designed, lint and dirt gets under the screen, it's sluggish, requires a reset every other day, the 'App World' is a complete joke, and I dropped it ONCE (just once) on gravel and the screen shattered. I'm not trying to bash BlackBerry, I have absolutely loved 8330 and then my Curve (which I finally fell back on and am using now). However, BB trashed their opportunity by rushing to the market far too quickly. All I can hope for is that the Storm 2 is what the Storm should have been, and I wish them the best of luck with it, but they likely won't have my business again. iPhone 3.0 all the way.
And, for all you people who are going to bitch about me putting down BlackBerry and promoting Apple and their iPhone, as I said before, I love BBs, but the Storm just isn't for me. I have an iPod Touch, love it, and based on that, will be getting an iPhone.
LTE capable? lol
Gosh I hope they include some of these "features" from Storm 1:
Daily Reboots
Sluggish response
Jumps to adjacent key while pressing the key you want
Press on link and screen zooms in instead of going to link
Unsure Type
Turn phone from vertical to horizontal but page doesn't turn till it feels like it
Camera that doesn't work unless you reboot
Sucky Browser
Inaccurate clock
Can't control music volume unless you go to music screen
Expensive, useless Apps that you need a PayPal account to even use
Heavy and fat form factor
Complete lack of sophistication
There's more but I don't want to be petty. LOOOOOOL!
TJ, I think many others will agree with me when I say that you are a freakin douchebag. All smartphones have their downsides including your precious splooged covered iphone.
What Storm have you used? Mine works fine, never had those issues
Oh, you think you can only install apps from an app store. If you do own actually a blackberry, please trade it in for an etch-a-sketch immediately. You can reboot that all you want, too.
the only thing that have "Complete lack of sophistication" are your posts.
Intelligent post serge . How's life down there in your mothers basement ?
bjharri I have the Blackberry Storm 9530, what other Storm is there ? I do have ALL of the issues I mentioned. At first they're just a minor annoyance, but after a while, they get worse and become VERY aggravating. I'd guess that many of these issues can be fixed with a software update, but this phone should never have been released as is. Calling it a beta would be a compliment .
Uhm not to be a jerk and jump on the Storm bashing bandwagon, but being a BES admin I can without a doubt in my mind say that the Storm is the worst BB to ever hit the market. Not only was it rushed to hit before Christmas, but the OS was never built from the ground up for the Storm, the Bold is much better all around.
I can live with gen1 problems and have in the past with RIM devices, but they really tried too hard to please the market here and in the end may have made peoples minds up about weather to go back to windows mobile or dare I say Apple. The firmware/OS updates are few and far between and now with the news of a new one in the pipes, people who jumped on board early are really beggining to understand that this was just a money grab before Christmas season.
Please RIM make it lighter, add wifi and don't let verizon add so much crap that it becomes a waste of time.
RIM is supposed to be business so why on earth are they concentrating on an app store and terrible MM playback?
Uggh
You're not being a jerk for complaining about a product that should have never been released. You summed up the problem perfectly: they rushed this phone to market. Morons like serge and jonathan that make their infantile remarks are the jerks because they think people complain for no reason other than to bash .
it was on the show 'fast money', jim goldman reported it.
here is another article on it.....
http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/04/08/research-in-motion-slide-out-keyboard-for-storm-2/?mod=yahoobarrons