BlackBerry Storm

BlackBerry Development Storm

Posted by Sam Churchill on October 8th, 2008

Research In Motion officially announced the BlackBerry Storm today, RIM’s first touchscreen cell phone, designed to compete with the iPhone. Engadget, Phone Scoop and Crackberry have reviews. Verizon Wireless will carry the device as well as Vodafone - so no WiFi.

New developer tools from RIM include a BlackBerry Java Development Environment and desktop simulators for the Storm, Bold and Pearl Flip handsets.

Features and specifications include touch screen, GPS, MicroSD memory slot, camera and video Recording, 528-MHz processor, email for personal and business accounts, instant messaging and text messaging (SMS and MMS), and access to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

According to ABI Research, nearly half of social networking users (46%) have visited a social network on a mobile device. Out of those users, 70% have visited MySpace and 67% have visited Facebook.

In other news, Nuance Communications has announced a deal to provide mobile speech and predictive text capabilities on Nokia devices.

Nokia will license Nuance’s technology and offer open protocols for use by developers. Application creators will be able make use of a series of APIs, language models and other development tools as part of the effort, which is designed to spur innovative products that integrate Nuance’s offerings on Nokia devices, says RCR News.

Mobile players are actively enticing developers to build applications for their platforms. Apple’s iPhone App store showed the way and was followed by Google’s Android, soon to be available on T-Mobile.

source : dailywirless.org