Blackberry’s new 9500 ‘Thunderstorm’ model has a 3.25inch TFT display sporting the resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. It also has an accelerometer for auto-rotation of the screen. It also carries a 3.5mm earphone socket and a microSD slot for up to 8GB of extended memory. It comes pre-equipped with 1 GB of internal storage.

On the imaging front, it has a 3.2 MP camera with features such as auto-focus and LED flash. The media player supports both DivX and XviD formats. For navigation, it also has a GPS (in the form of A-GPS) and uses the proprietary Blackberry Maps. For connectivity, it offers stereo Blue tooth and USB 2.0 slots. 3G is also supported out-of-the-box; however, presently it holds no significance in India.

The ‘Thunderstorm’ model boasts of the world’s first ‘clickable’ touch screen. It responds identical to a physical keyboard. Single-touch, multi-touch and gesture movements are supported that makes navigating the application quite a snap.

Overall, this first touchscreen-enabled blackberry Smartphone carries the best features of communication and multimedia and hence is suitable for a wider base of audience. It also effectively solves the problem associated with conventional touch screen typing. The phone will be launched in India very soon. Its going to be the best mobile phone for some time.