Hands on with RIM’s second touch-screen handset
Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled its second full touch-screen handset earlier this month, the BlackBerry Storm2 9520. The device is the successor to the original BlackBerry Storm, with new touch-screen technology, an updated operating system and, most importantly, Wi-Fi, which was sadly missing from the first handset.
We recently spent some time with the Storm2 to compile this first impression of the handset without thoroughly benchmarking and testing the device.
To the untrained eye, the new and old models look the same with their large screens, same form factor, and the same core email and text messaging functionality. It’s only when we look a little deeper that we find the handset has changed somewhat for the better in most areas.
The Storm2 touch-screen is the first of the significant changes from the original Storm. Underlying the surface of the 3.25in display is an electro-mechanical mechanism for interpreting the touch-screen requests, whereas the previous handset had a purely mechanical mechanism. The original Storm had one large plate suspended just under its raised screen for reading touch-screen inputs. When pressed, the screen moved inwards a slight distance.
Selecting an application or any item on both the original Storm and the Storm2 is still performed by just touching the display, while launching that item is done by pressing down on the moveable screen, which retracts slightly and then returns back to its starting position.
RIM has done away with the large plate under the screen and has replaced it with four smaller sensors. These are located under each corner of the display for a more accurate reading and interpretation of the user’s touch request as compared to the earlier single large plate.
Both of these technologies provide tactile feedback and fall under RIM’s SurePress technology. In the prior version of SurePress, the mechanical mechanism had its flaws and critics. On the first Storm the interpretation of touch requests was not entirely accurate all of the time. On using the two versions side by side, we found that the new electro-mechanical mechanism is much more precise compared to the first mobile.
