Technology
The BlackBerry Storm showed why you should never turn a touchscreen into a button
In 2007, the iPhone ushered in an period of touchscreen devices that precipitated most buttons to fade from our telephones without end. However there was one temporary second within the grey, transitory haze between buttons and touchscreens that an unlikely firm tried to fuse the 2 collectively. BlackBerry cut up the distinction by boldly asking, “What if a touchscreen was additionally a {hardware} button?”
Thus was born the BlackBerry Storm, a tool whose complete touchscreen doubled as a pressable button. The Storm was one of many first (and final) makes an attempt to bridge the legacy world of bodily keyboards and the fashionable world of touchscreens. However to know the existence of the BlackBerry Storm and its weird clicking display screen, we first want to return and perceive BlackBerry on the peak of its energy — and why it needed to maintain buttons alive.
To BlackBerry, buttons had been the complete level of its merchandise. Once you image a BlackBerry cellphone in your head, you’re not seeing an interchangeable slab. You’re seeing a full QWERTY keyboard that spans the decrease third of a cellphone, with impossibly small keys which are by some means good to sort on. A BlackBerry with out the ever present, clicky keyboard for firing off BBM messages and emails was hardly a BlackBerry in any respect. Even the corporate’s brand evokes the chiclet keys that constructed its model.
However even essentially the most beloved buttons can’t beat again the inexorable waves of progress: touchscreens had been the long run, and BlackBerry needed to bounce on board. As Steve Jobs commented in his now-famous 2007 iPhone introduction, telephones just like the BlackBerry or Palm Treo “all have these keyboards which are there whether or not you want them or to not be there, and so they all have these management buttons which are mounted in plastic.” And as such, they’re unable to adapt to particular purposes or consumer interfaces. It was an statement that might precede the announcement of the touchscreen-only iPhone and the start of the tip for {hardware} buttons on telephones.
BlackBerry received the message. And so, in 2008, the corporate made the Storm, its first touchscreen cellphone. On the time, the system had a 3.25-inch display screen, a lot bigger than its then-typical 2.5-inch screens. And it didn’t have a bodily keyboard.
As an alternative, the Storm had a singular “SurePress” show: quite than keyboard buttons, the complete show was a huge button that may very well be clicked down like a trackpad. On an iPhone, you merely tapped away at a digital keyboard with no actual indication that you simply had been urgent something. On the BlackBerry Storm, you bodily needed to “press” every key to sort, full with an ultra-satisfying “click on” sound, due to the mechanical change beneath.
It was a terrific thought, in principle. In follow, the Storm was horrible to sort on. (There’s a cause we use a number of little keys to sort quite than one large button.) The massive display screen on the Storm was gradual and needed to totally decrease and lift earlier than you can press one other key. The lightning-fast typing that BlackBerry energy customers had grown used to slowed to a glacial tempo — typing out one letter at a time.
The corporate would attempt to tweak the components on the Storm2 a yr later, changing the only mechanical change with 4 piezoelectric switches on the corners of the show (making it potential to “press” a number of keys directly). It additionally added a full-size QWERTY keyboard in vertical orientation (the place the unique solely supplied a wierd two-letter-per-key choice). However even then, the SurePress know-how wasn’t ok to copy the sensation of typing on one in all BlackBerry’s regular keyboards.
BlackBerry tried to supply prospects the most effective of each worlds when it made the Storm; as a substitute, it managed to harness the worst qualities of each bodily {hardware} and touchscreen typing. It resulted in a laggy, gradual expertise that wasn’t significantly fulfilling or simple to sort on. The bodily components had been louder and extra fatiguing for customers than a conventional QWERTY keyboard, with none of the tactile advantages of a number of {hardware} keys. The added friction from the bodily change detracted from any main advantages of a touchscreen for typing, too.
It’s no marvel that BlackBerry would abandon its SurePress know-how shortly afterward: in 2010, its subsequent flagship, the BlackBerry Torch, would provide a show that was the identical dimension because the Storm however with a conventional BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard.
BlackBerry would bounce between full touchscreen units and its acquainted {hardware} keyboard for years after the Storm (even providing each in lots of circumstances). However the firm by no means tried to construct a tactile touchscreen once more.
As a result of whereas buttons could be a great way to make use of a cellphone — and touchscreens could be a great way to make use of a cellphone — a large touchscreen-button hybrid turned out to be a horrible thought.