RIM’s touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder caught in the wild

Can’t stand the veritable flood of iPhone 3G news? Well, worry not, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) fanatics. RIM’s touchscreen answer to the iPhone 3G is on its way to a smartphone market near you. And, to make sure the world isn’t so caught up in iPhone hype that they forget about the rest of the smartphone industry’s touchscreen offerings, it seems that RIM has let a few pictures of their highly anticipated BlackBerry Thunder handset.

What you see here are real-deal, live pics of the BlackBerry Thunder and its rumored buggy UI hanging out with its big ‘ole touchscreen for all the world to see. The pics looks real enough, so we’ll stop short of calling this a rumor outright.

A quick refresher - the BlackBerry Thunder will be toting RIM’s new BlackBerry OS - BlackBerry OS 4.7 - and a localized haptic feedback system that vibrates a specific region of touch-input rather than vibrating the entirely device. As soon as RIM works out the bugs, we’re sure the BlackBerry Thunder’s haptic feedback system will boost the handset as a serious touchscreen competitor in a rapidly crowding smartphone segment.

The display features both vibration feedback and an audible “click” to announce that a virtual-key has been pressed. There’s apparently a glass-overlay, a la the iPhone, that is said to allow multi-touch interaction. And, would you look at the size of that screen? It’s almost as wide as it is tall - and it’s not short by any measure. Bring on the touchscreen revolution, with gigantic multi-touch displays in tow!

[Via: CrackBerry]