The BlackBerry Storm name just became a LOT more official. Engadget scored a sweet image of the actual BOX the Verizon BlackBerry 9530 is going to ship in. How do you like that for a leaked pic?! Details from the box suggest Verizon's touchscreen will feature a pre-installed 8GB microSD card and pre-installed SIM card (global phone).
As for the name... I guess nobody is going to win my BlackBerry Curve afterall. Rewind to our blog post on May 1st when we were the first to make a prediction on RIM's touchscreen device being called the BlackBerry Storm - I promised I'd give away my Curve to a lucky reader if I ended up being proved wrong on this one. The funny thing here is that none of the prevailing device name thoughts that surfaced were wrong... BOTH the STORM and THUNDER names are going to get action. CrackBerry Podcast listeners heard this notion a couple of episodes ago that RIM's touchscreen could be going by different names on different carriers (we dropped the notion again in the blogs when we mockingly began referring to the device as the "ThunderStorm").
While Verizon brews the Storm, the Thunder name will accompany the device on carriers like Vodafone and .... ROGERS??!! Yup, that's the new word. I wonder what happened to that Telus Canadian exclusivity we heard about?! So much for the worldwide lifetime exclusive. While I LOVE the Storm name and like the Thunder name, I'm now thinking this phone should have been called the TRANSFORMER. There has always been way more to this story than has ever met the eye. Actually, I'm pretty sure this is the first time in the history of RIM that the device's codename(s) have actually gone through and become the product names. Awesome! Now, enough of the Box. What I want to know is how we do get our hands on what's inside the box?! Great find Engadget!
