Smartphone wars heat up – HTC Dream and Blackberry Storm

Everyone is wondering what HTC and Blackberry will have up their sleeves over the next few months. The Android powered HTC Dream will be unveiled at a press event in New York City by T-Mobile next week on September 23 and it is rumoured to be ready for release sometime in October. There is also a pretty interesting video of Android being shown off at the Developer Day in London, and it’s looking very polished.

Hot on the heals of the Google Android phone will be the new Blackberry Storm which is a direct competitor to the iPhone. It has a soft touchscreen with built-in tactile feedback. I can’t help but wonder how scratch resistant this will be; I have a Nintendo DS which is a soft touch screen and it is very scratched up. I really wouldn’t want this to be the case for a phone that goes in your pocket for most of the day. The iPhone screen is extremely scratch resistance, so this could be a show stopper for some people but we’ll have to wait and see. The release dates around the Storm are a bit cloudy as Verizon seems to be playing games with everyone. Today many blogs linked to Verizon’s Storm announcement page which was then removed.

Exciting times in deed, although the Android OS has my attention more than any of the phones themselves. Another interesting tidbit was in London today when one of the Android guys was asked if it could run on other devices he replied “why not?”.