Here’s a video making the rounds that shows three upcoming phones - HTC Coke, LG Lotus (LX600) and the Blackberry Thunder (aka 9500). This is the first video I’ve seen of the touch screen Blackberry and it confirms earlier reports that the touch implementation is challenged in at least two ways. First, the screen operates by a lot of tough pushing. Secondly the scrolling appears to require more effort and not the smooth finger movements that competitors use. Most impressive is the phone’s implementation of screen rotation. The Blackberry Thunder can be rotated 360 around and the screen will rotate fully to any position that the phone is held. This model is rumored for an appearance on Verizon at some unknown future time in the fourth quarter of 2008.

via Engadget and Crackberry

BoyGeniusReport has what appear to be the first photos of the upcoming touchscreen Blackberry (aka Blackberry Thunder). While there is no clue given as to what the OS will be like (we’d have to assume that it will use a slightly modified version of the standard Blackberry OS), the photos appear at a most appropriate time for causing the maximum FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) for anyone thinking of jumping ship from the Blackberry in favor of Apple’s iPhone. As you know Apple is widely expected to unveil their more corporate friendly version of the iPhone which is rumored to include both 3G data speeds and Microsoft Exchange integration. I’m still predicting that unless Blackberry comes out with a killer browser (and I don’t mean slapping Opera into their OS as either an integration or add-on) that you should expect a steady decline in Blackberry sales .

Link: Boy Genius Report - Blackberry Thunder live shot, damn we’re good!