14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing the high-end BlackBerry Bold 9000 smartphone, RIM is preparing for an even greater unveiling and that is BlackBerry Thunder 9500, the first full-touchscreen handset produced by the Canadian company.
The first real image with BlackBerry Thunder appeared at Boy Genius Report and it shows a quite nice-looking smartphone (not that we expected to see an ugly device). The new Thunder has only six hardware keys on its front case (four under the screen and two above) and a wide touchscreen display of unknown (yet) resolution and color number. There are also several other keys on the right and left sides of the smartphone: volume keys, camera key and an application key, plus a headset jack (probably a 3.5mm one) and a USB port.
Aside from these aspects there's not much else that we know for sure about BlackBerry Thunder. However, we should expect its features to be similar or even better than the ones RIM included in the Bold 9000 smartphone. Therefore, the new Thunder could come with built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, a photo camera of at least 2 Megapixels, a powerful processor, an internal memory of at least 1GB, full HTML browser, Bluetooth, Video and Music players, plus a new User Interface, like the one the Bold 9000 has. Sure, the interface of Thunder has to be especially made for a touchscreen display, but I don't think that's a problem for RIM.
BlackBerry Thunder should hit the US market by the end of 2008 via Verizon Wireless (which recently bought Alltel and will become the largest mobile operator in North America). The smartphone is also said to be released in Europe and other countries from around the world, but only via Vodafone. We'll find out more about RIM's first full-touchscreen handset when the Canadian company decides to officially announce the new smartphone.