Vodafone Announces BlackBerry Storm 2 Officially

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The BlackBerry Storm was RIM’s first touchscreen phone, we all remember that. We also remember that we looked at it with admiration hoping that it will become a phone capable to fight successfully against the iPhone. While the initial Storm failed to be an iPhone contender, we now have a much better version of the phone, the BlackBerry Storm 2.

Vodafone and RIM decided to make the BlackBerry 9520 Storm 2 official today. The phone has been announced for eight markets, seven European countries and South Africa. The phone will be available soon in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and South Africa. The Storm 2 will hit stores in time for Christmas so get ready to ask Santa to get you a new BlackBerry.

What will the Storm 2 bring you? Well we can’t but notice three very important features: a new SurePress capacitive touchscreen display, Wi-Fi connectivity and BlackBerry OS 5.0. And here’s a complete list of specifications and features:

• New design: chrome accents, glass lens and stainless steel backplate
• 3.25-inch 360 x 480 capacitive touchscreen with SurePress feedback technology
• Quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM and UMTS/HSPA connectivity
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• 3.2-megapixel camera with zoom, autofocus, flash and video recording
• 256MB of Flash memory
• 2GB of onboard memory ready to support up to 16GB microSD/SDHD cards
• 3.5 mm stereo jack
• Bluetooth 2.1
• BlackBerry OS 5, BlackBerry Internet Service, BlackBerry Enterprise Server

As you can see, the new Storm will have Wi-Fi on board unlike its predecessor and a new OS. The tactile feedback has been totally redesigned. The new SurePress system will respond to any screen touch making you feel that you’re actually pressing a real, localized button. The previous feedback system was basically a big button and hence the Storm wasn’t a great tool for sending fast messages and emails.

We don’t have all the prices available today but Vodafone UK will sell the Storm 2 free of charge when purchased with a new 2-year contract with a monthly fee of at least £35 per month. What do you think folks? Is the Storm 2 going to disappoint?