The blogosphere has been abuzz with praise and anger over the new Blackberry code name “Thunder” that is expected to come exclusively to Verizon and Vodafone sometime in October.  What gets people talking is the fact that this latest Blackberry does away with the keyboard and will instead sport a large touch screen similar to the iPhone.

Blackberry Thunder - MockupRoger Matus, a colleague of mine, and fellow blogger even declares that “BlackBerry Gets It Wrong” on his DeathbyEmail blog.  I respectfully disagree.  Blackberry has become a household name by building a huge following in the enterprise. One of the reasons for the success is the robust back-end called Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). With BES, companies can implement mobile IT policies that address the all-important corporate security and compliance needs.

Over the last few years, RIM has been keen on expanding its market beyond the enterprise into the broader consumer space, offering many slick new phones such as the Pearl and Curve, and providing integration with consumer email services as well. It just seems logical to add a device to the line-up that can compete with the iPhone, which will be a huge design and engineering challenge for RIM nonetheless.  There are many mobile applications, other than email, (e.g. web browsing, maps, etc.) that hugely benefit from the large screen without the keyboard.

Let’s remember, unlike Apple’s one-trick pony, RIM offers plenty of other phones to choose from. If you don’t like the touch-screen you can pick one with a keyboard!

I’ll have to wait and see if this new phone is right for me. I’ve tried the iPhone and admit that the touch-screen takes some practice for fast typing. RIM is planning to improve the typing experience by providing tactile response.

I’m also testing a new service on my current Blackberry, called myCaption, The service allows me to speak my emails directly into the phone. It is still a little slow but provides amazingly good speech recognition results. Who knows, I may not need a keyboard for typing emails much longer after all…

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