RIM (employee): Storm 2 with "new approach to text entry" for end 2009, early 2010
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Apr 8th 2009 4:50AM
posted Apr 8th 2009 4:50AM
Reputable Dutch site Tweakers has Alain Segond von Banchet, RIM channel sales manager according to LinkedIn, stating that the BlackBerry Storm followup is scheduled to launch at the end of the year or at the beginning of next. In addition, he has the phone coming to KPN, not Vodafone who had the first generation Storm locked-up under an exclusive deal. Interestingly enough, Mr. Segond von Banchet says that the Storm 2 (not the final name) will "offer among other things a new manner to input text" -- among other things meaning WiFi, presumably, as we heard before. Keep in mind that channel sales managers do not typically represent a company to the press. Nevertheless, what he's saying does jibe with previous rumors and we have no doubt that RIM is working hard to avoid the universal disdain that greeted the Storm's mushy, push-button touchscreen input.Update: Tweakers responded telling us that Mr. Segond von Banchet was speaking on the record for RIM because there was no one from marketing at the TeleVisie 2009 Expo yesterday.
I quite liked the Storm looks (on paper) and I was sorely disappointed to discover that a hellish combination of bad hardware components, poor software design and missing applications, pushed it to the very bottom of the smartphones list.
I hope that the next version will solve all the troubles that plague the present version but since it will have to fight for turf with new entries like Nokia's N97, Archos/TI Android smartphone, Toshiba TG01, and HTC's Thoth and Super Star, it will probably have a hard time to conquer its niche.
Was the Pre too obvious to mention in your list of new entries?
Regardless of whether or not Palm's new device is any good, it clearly has all the competitors' R&D departments working ovetime (new iPhone, Storm 2, etc…).
Lets see what comes first.... a new Storm or an official Verizon Storm OS update....