Will the New Blackberry Cause a Storm?

The iPhone has soared to become the ultimate smartphone, the must-have accessory that everyone from celebrities to your mom wants -- nay, needs -- to have in their pocket. It's changed the landscape of modern cellphones, put a serious dent in the sales of competing devices (just recently overtaking the venerable RAZR as the best-selling domestic handset), and unquestionably raised the bar when it comes to expectations for features in new handsets.

But can the BlackBerry Storm even begin to compete with the iPhone?

The Storm, a widescreen, touchscreen device boasts many of the same features as the iPhone, but adds innovations like a clickable display, and comes packed with RIM's legendary email and messaging services. Mainlined into the biggest (and some say best) network in the States, the Storm is an almost deafening blast to the competition at first glance, but does it hold up on closer inspection?

BlackBerrys have garnered an almost mythic stature as the phone for email and messaging. One of the components of RIM's success for that model has been the inclusion of QWERTY keypads on their phones. As any email addict will tell you, very few devices can compete. The slant from RIM's PR on the Storm is that the new clickable touchscreen delivers another high caliber typist's dream to their roster -- but that couldn't be further from the truth. Rather than the click making things easier, it actually makes them more difficult. As you press down to engage a "key," you're required to release before moving to another, which means that you can only type so quickly.

On paper, The Blackberry Storm sounds like the perfect antidote to our gripes about the iPhone, and in some ways it lives up to those promises, but ultimately, this could be a great platform with a little more time in the oven, but right now, it feels undercooked