Blackberry Thunder touch screen photos

I'm personally not too keen on a touch-screen keyboard but this new Blackberry Thunder looks to be a potential real competitor to the iPhone, at least for business users. And yet, somehow this new BB makes me like the iPhone even more.

I'm not convinced music apps matter as much to BB users and so far the iPhone still stomps every other device in terms of multimedia. It would be good if RIM would pick a focus area for BB to compete with iPhone.

Blackberry Thunder

(Credit: BlackberrySync)

Via BlackberrySync.com

[geolemon]

I'm VERY surprised to even see a BB that looks like this - BB CEO stated up, down, forward and backward that having a real, QWERTY keyboard was one of their core competitive advantages, and that their customer studies confirmed that.
I believe [in response to the inevitable iPhone comparison question in the interview] that he even directly criticized the lack of tactile feedback from a touch screen.
Is this really real? It's not April 1st...

[Tinman52]

I don't know if that's the case. I think the Dare's virtual keyboard works great.

[breedin_hips]

Very excited to finally see Blackberry stepping outside their comfort zone!

[Precifijo]

It would have been soooo Nice if the BlackBerry Bold's screen had touch capability. Picture that.. a full qwerty keyboard, a trackball and a touch screen... wouldn't that have been nice??

I have an ipod touch for multimedia specifically so I could keep my Blackberry as my communication device and the primary reason was the full QWERTY keyboard. Typing on a touchscreen is far less accurate and efficient. Hopefully this is a positioning thing for one model only.