BlackBerry out to squash Apple in Christmas rush

The first touch-screen BlackBerry phone will arrive in British stores today in a fresh battle with its main competitor, Apple.

The BlackBerry Storm offers many of the same features found on the Apple iPhone and will be available exclusively on the Vodafone network. It will become available in Ireland next week.

Tariffs in Britain will start at £35 (€41) a month — the same as the iPhone’s — which includes unlimited internet browsing.

Research in Motion, the company behind the handset, is thought to be keen to broaden the BlackBerry’s appeal beyond its traditional business base.

The Storm has up to 16GB of storage, enough for more than 3,000 songs, and users will be able to download tracks from the Vodafone Music Store.

It has a 3.25 inch (8.25cm) high-resolution touch screen and provides one-touch access to online social networking sites such as Facebook and the photo -sharing site Flickr, as well as built-in satellite navigation and mapping software.

The phone features a 3.2-megapixel camera, compared with the iPhone’s two-megapixel camera.

Ernest Doku, from mobile phone price comparison site Omio.com, said: “The Storm is the latest attempt to move the BlackBerry brand from the boardroom to the bistro and court the casual shopper.

“With a huge 3.2 inch high-resolution touchscreen, headphone jack, iTunes support and multimedia playback, the Storm is a far cry from the simplistic mail devices of a few years ago. That’s not to say it isn’t still a BlackBerry at heart, with a document viewer, email and instant messaging functionality and a robust internet browser built in.

“With every smart phone claiming to make web browsing a mobile experience indistinguishable from surfing at home, the Storm is one of the few that have come even close to it.”

A cheaper alternative to the BlackBerry, the so-called Facebook phone, was launched by mobile phone company 3 yesterday in time for Christmas.

The INQ1 — pronounced “ink one” — has been dubbed the Facebook phone because it allows users to access their social networking circle at the touch of a button. The phone integrates the social networking site with the traditional functions of a mobile phone, such as a contacts book and inbox.

It is aimed at users who find smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and G1 too expensive but still want to use social networking, email and instant messaging as well as surf the internet on the move.

The INQ1 will be free on contracts from £15 (€17.60) a month.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: “More than 15 million Facebook users currently access the site through their mobile devices. This number has doubled over the past six months, and we expect it to continue to grow as people become familiar with handsets like INQ.”