BlackBerry Storm3 pops up in first video
updated 05:55 pm EST, Fri February 18, 2011
BlackBerry Storm3 shown for real in video
RIM's long in the making BlackBerry Storm3 has appeared in the flesh on Friday through a video (below). Along with confirming its combination of a keyboard-free design with a trackpad, the slip shows the extra screen area afforded by the 3.7-inch, 480x800 display. It clearly represents a Verizon prototype and has both the Verizon logo and on-phone theming along with a "live air activation" market indicating that it was ready to work on the CDMA and EVDO networks, hinted by a 3G badge in the upper right of the display.
The phone, known as the Monaco in its CDMA form, should be a major leap in performance with a 1.2GHz Snapdragon at least twice as fast in real performance as the Storm2's old 624MHz processor. Its camera wouldn't be any better than in the Torch through a five-megapixel sensor and flash, but it would drop the roundly criticized SurePress click-down screen and carry 4GB of storage. BlackBerry 6.1 is new and will help accommodate the new screen among other updates, although the version seen here was said to be old.
That 2011 BlackBerries would carry NFC for wireless payments was already confirmed by RIM itself.
The Storm3 might not ship to Verizon until summer, but a GSM equivalent codenamed the Monza is also in the works. [via CrackBerry
