The upcoming BlackBerry Storm is the first touch screen BlackBerry smartphone from Research In Motion and it builds upon a variety of existing BlackBerry features and capabilities to produce a truly compelling touch experience. With the BlackBerry Storm, RIM will introduce a version of software (v4.7) that delivers a new set of APIs and capabilities for third party developers including...

1) Enhancements to the existing RIM User Interface APIs to provide support for touch and gestures including proper handling of multi-touch events.

2) Support for MIDP applications that leverage touch.

3) Virtual keyboard APIs

4) Enhanced and open GPS APIs on all networks

For third party developers, one of the unique features of the BlackBerry Storm is its compatibility mode which provides an operating environment for existing 3rd party applications that are not implemented to support touch. This feature will automatically convert the touch events into existing trackball events. When an application is executing in compatibility mode, a virtual keyboard will be shown at all times for text input to mimic the physical keyboard on previous devices and will only support portrait mode.

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