Sorry for the corny title, but Engadget already used every other play on the word storm. The new Blackberry Storm was recently announced and will be hitting shelves pretty soon. It is definitely a very attractive handset with some even more attractive specs.

The Storm is RIM’s very first touchscreen phone, mounting a 3.26-inch 480 x 360 glass display on a unique clickable surface so that the entire thing can be pressed downwards just like a real button for tactile feedback when making selections (hmm, seems like a good idea to me). It includes a full HTML browser, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of on-board storage (1GB?) with an 8GB microSD card bundled in the box (OK, not too shabby), 3.5mm headphone jack (take that, G1), automatic orientation and ambient lighting sensors, and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam with dedicated flash.

Did you notice something missing among those specs? Why, oh why, RIM, would you leave Wifi out of such a phone? I just don’t get it. Anyway, another thing that makes this phone attractive to yours truly, is the fact that there is a CDMA version of it, the 9530 (yes, I am sorry to say, I am still on CDMA).

Although many handsets being introduced today claim they support push mail, none of them do it (as far as I know) as smoothly and flawlessly as the original Blackberry technology. I am saying this, after I was just told by an iPhone 3G user, that with push mail activated, the battery lasts 1.5 hours. Na, we can’t have that.

I have to conclude by saying that with the advantage of real push mail, this could have been a real HD killer (have you not heard? The term “iPhone killer” is no more, ever since the HTC Touch HD filled those shoes. We are now on the lookout for an HD Killer. I think I am officially coining the term “HD Killer”). But with the lack of Wifi, I think the HD will stay on its thrown for now.

-Hillel