Feature – Even if we have seen some serious attempts of larger cellphone manufacturers to replicate Apple’s iPhone this year, the Apple device remains the benchmark in the smartphone segment. But the gap is getting smaller: Google’s Android G1 is challenging some features of the iPhone, but the Google-branded handset lacks a certain kind of finesse to successfully compete and will likely need a bit more work. RIM, traditionally a company catering especially to businesses, is launching what may be the most serious iPhone rival yet – the touchscreen enabled Strom 9500. How does it compare to the iPhone?

Blackberry has become an institution. It's the de facto business tool, but it's market is now under attack from Apple whose iPhone outsold Blackberrys and Windows Mobile devices in Q3 and is making progress with business users. Apple is now the #3 cellphone vendor in terms of handsets revenue and the world's second-largest smartphone vendor with a 17.6% market share, behind Nokia (38.9%) and ahead of RIM (15.2%). The iPhone recently surpassed Motorola’s Razr to become the nation's most popular consumer handset and the latest ChangeWave research shows that Apple is gaining ground in the enterprise market: The company is estimated to have increased its corporate market share at the expense of both RIM and Palm and is now the #2 smartphone supplier to businesses, with a 14% share of the market (RIM: 76%, Palm: 11%).

RIM has been long expected to come up with a reply – which has been released today: The Blackberry Storm 9500. Generally seen as an "iPhone for business users," the Storm has all the ingredients, from the design and overall aesthetics, to hardware and a great screen to business features and compelling applications. We compared the Storm and the iPhone side by side and wondered: Has RIM now an iPhone for business users?


The design

Aesthetics is Apple's game. We have plenty iPhone lookalikes and, at the same time, we are a bit disappointed when we see challengers like the HTC-built Android G1, which clearly need to do some extra work in this category. With that in mind, the Storm is in a category of its own. It does not look like a copycat. On the contrary, the phone raises the bar in the design arena and looks stunning from any angle, with its stylish brushed aluminum back, a huge transflective and clickable screen and a stylish black finish. Looks are a matter of taste, so we leave it up to you to decide which phone has the edge here. But subjectively, the Storm is just as much a fashion statement as the iPhone.


Clickable screen vs. touchscreen

Storm sets itself apart from the iPhone and the mass of touchscreen clones with its unique clickable screen that reacts to both touch and pressure. You don't just touch to select something, but press slightly until the entire screen clicks down slightly. The effect can be compared to the glass trackpad on the new Macbooks that also clicks down when pressed. The clickable screen provides the Storm with an extra form of input, in addition to touch, giving the device Storm a slight edge over the iPhone in some aspects of the user interface. For instance, the bold icons in the GUI are large enough to be comfortably selected with your thumb, they glow when touched but the selection is not made unless you click.


Two types of multitouch

The reason why no other phone besides iPhone has multi-finger gestures is because Apple has patented the technology for use in mobile phones. Multitouch in the Storm is very limited and the claim to support this feature just because you can select text with two fingers may be an exaggeration. The Storm lacks multi-finger gesture support like pinch zoom, which remains an iPhone trademark.


SureType vs. QWERTY keyboard

In terms of text input, the Storm combines the best of both worlds. The phone offers a virtual keyboard also found on the iPhone, in addition to RIM's trademark SureType keypad. The latter, the default input method in portrait mode, combines a traditional phone keypad with a QWERTY layout that features two characters per key. When you press an intended key, a blue glow is shown. Those users who have grown used to SureType will see this as a clear advantage for the device. However, for everyone else, it takes practice to master SureType.

When you change the handset orientation to landscape, Storm displays a full QWERY virtual keyboard for composing email, editing documents, entering text and URLs, etc. The iPhone lets you use the virtual keyboard in landscape mode only in Safari, not in Mail or other applications. This irrational misstep frustrates even die-hard iPhone fans and is especially annoying when writing emails. It is beyond our comprehension why it is taking Apple so long to fix this issue in its software. Simply put, the Storm has the edge in data input - even with SureType out of the picture.

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