RIM's first full-touch smartphone, the BlackBerry Thunder 9500, will apparently be a serious competitor for Apple's new iPhone 3G, as well as for all the other touchscreen mobile devices that might want to become popular this year.

According to BlackBerry News, the new Thunder will come under the official name of BlackBerry 9500. It will feature a BlackBerry 4.7.0 OS and a display supporting a bigger resolution than the one of iPhone 3G: 360 x 480 pixels, as opposed to only 320 x 480. Now, if the display of RIM's new smartphone is of at least 3.2 inches and supports 16 million colors, then it's highly probable that it will offer a better visual experience than the display of iPhone 3G. Anyway, since there's nothing fully confirmed regarding the Thunder, we can't know for sure if its display can indeed compete with iPhone 3G's.

Although we've already seen a picture of what's believed to be the new BlackBerry Thunder 9500, there's no official image to represent the smartphone - that's why we've included an image with the Bold 9000 in this article. Moreover, besides the details unveiled above, the features of RIM's Thunder are a mystery for now (save for the 3G connectivity).

There's no word yet whether the Thunder will have a slide-out keyboard or if it's touchscreen-only. If the latter case proves to be true, the 9500 will be the single BlackBerry to come without a full QWERTY (and physical) keyboard. This might not be seen as a good thing by BlackBerry's fans who have become the brand's fans mainly due to the easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard.

Research in Motion should unveil the BlackBerry Thunder 9500 sometime during this quarter, and we'll see then what exactly the device can offer. The smartphone is said to be released only by Verizon Wireless (in the US) and Vodafone (in the rest of the world). But since this would leave out RIM's home country, Canada (as neither Verizon nor Vodafone are present there), the new touchscreen smarpthone might actually be launched by other operators, too.