By LAWRENCE TAN

Research In Motion puts a spin on the touch-screen mobile phone with its first-ever touch-screen offering, the BlackBerry Storm, available exclusively to Verizon Wireless in the United States, and Vodafone in Europe, India and Oceania.

Instead of tapping as you normally would on a touch-screen phone, the BlackBerry Storm’s patented ClickThrough technology requires that you depress the touch-screen slightly as you type away. The tactile sensation is akin to using a physical keyboard or a normal keypad albeit on a flat surface.

The usual touch-screen navigational tools are offered – taps, slides, and multi-touch function, in addition to the familiar BlackBerry navigation keys (“phone”, “menu” and "escape”). There’s also a built-in accelerometer, so you can opt for the portrait RIM’s SureType keyboard or a full QWERTY keyboard displayed in landscape mode. 

In the US, the BlackBerry Storm will run on Verizon’s 3G Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) network, and Vodafone’s quad-band EDGE and HSPA networks for Europe but Wi-Fi is not supported.

Another unique feature is that the 480x360 touch-screen can be used like a laptop’s trackpad as you browse the Internet. Besides the usual Office applications like Word, Excel and Powerpoint, other features include Bluetooth 2.0, built-in GPS, 1GB of on-board memory, 8 GB microSD card, a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, 3.5mm headphone jack and ambient lighting sensors.

www.rim.com