The Blackberry Storm as an Information Appliance

Today the Blackberry Storm, Blackberry’s touchscreen answer to the iPhone, was released. I went to get one this morning at the Cupertino store and they were already out. But we should get them in next week, just after our forthcoming RIM Blackberry support in Rhomobile (coming Monday!)

CIO Magazine recently published a list of eight reasons why the Storm may be better than the iPhone. I would have guessed that this was for enterprise application usage given where it was published.

But let’s go through their list of things they think are relevant and better about the Storm.

1. stereo bluetooth capability – is this really relevant for enterprise usage?
2. removable battery – absolutely crucial if you’re going to rely on your smartphone as a tool for mission critical applications
3. expandable memory – we of course are huge believers in the value of synced data at Rhomobile. Still, I don’t see that 16GB on a highend iPhone getting filled up
4. digital camera and video – I’ve always believed that the 2 megapixel camera on the iPhone is a crime. But its video support that really opens up a new class of applications.
5. Storm works as tethered modem – absolutely relevant to many applications in many areas where Wifi is few and far between
6. tactile feedback – very important if you want to use the device for content creation and interactive applications. I am a fairly adept iPhone typer. But I immediately found the Storm’s keyboard more useful when I used it in the store
7. copy/paste – Also very important for using applications, especially when you’re on a device without a real keyboard
8. multitasking – If you’re really going to run applications that do useful work on the same device the assumption that you can only use one third party application at a time is just not reasonable. On this point I disagree with CIO Magazine’s conclusions.

While I’m an enthusiastic daily iPhone user, from early experimentation I think the Blackberry storm is a winner of a device for mobile enterprise applications. Makes me even more excited about our upcoming RIM Blackberry release on Monday,

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