Many have been worried about performance due to RIM’s heavy reliance on Adobe technology when developing the operating system, but I can lay those concerns to rest: the PlayBook is already very responsive, and that’s with unfinished firmware and software.

The interface is quite reminiscent of webOS: for example, if you want to dismiss an app then you swish it upwards with your finger. Likewise, it offers true multitasking: no suspend states, your chosen app will continue running in the background if you so wish.

The apps will consume the full screen by default, but you’ll notice a distinct lack of buttons around the screen. Rather than press a button to bring up the home screen (as shown in the photo above), you can sweep upwards from just below the bottom of the screen – it then appears as a mini window, in a 3D, “album flow” design.

It’s a clever and intuitive system, and if you don’t believe me then watch it in action yourself (note: no audio):

The hardware didn’t hold many surprises. It’s a typical tablet design that feels solid in the hand, and as you’d expect from a chassis that measures 10mm thick and weighs 400g it feels very light.

So the future for the PlayBook looks good. The proof, as ever, will be in the apps.

As you’ll know if you’ve read my BlackBerry Torch review, I’m a fan of RIM’s new smartphone OS, BlackBerry OS 6. Although the Torch itself didn’t get my juices flowing, the knowledge the new Bold would arrive soon, with the new UI on board, appeased me somewhat.

Well, I’ve just laid my hands on one. Alas, I’m not bowled over.

The reason? Well, there isn’t anything particularly new about it. The camera has been boosted from 3.2 megapixels to 5, the trim around the front edge has been changed from black to chrome, the RAM has been doubled from 256MB to 512MB, and … um … that’s about it.

The keyboard is the same design. The screen is the same size (2.4in) and resolution (480 x 360 pixels), the dimension and weight are identical (60 x 14 x 109mm and 122g) and the battery capacity is the same (1,500mAh). The 624MHz processor remains obstinately the same.

This isn’t a terrible thing. I like the 9700 even now, and there’s no doubt at all that OS 6 works better on the Bold’s screen than on the Torch’s. There’s more room for icons along the bottom, while the keyboard is easier to use as it isn’t surrounded by a raised plastic lip. The 9780 is more pocketable, lighter, and if real-world battery life follows the figures stamped on the label, that should stomp on Torch’s too, with 230mAh of extra capacity.

The big question, however,  is will anyone buy one?

Not anyone in their right mind. After all, with 9700 owners  promised an OS 6 upgrade in the next few months, existing owners would be mad to upgrade for the sake of a couple of megapixels. Just wait and soon you’ll have a phone that’s all but identical … for nothing.

Meanwhile, anyone new to BlackBerry would be better off scouring the market for deals on the 9700. It’s largely the same handset, or at least it will be once the OS 6 upgrade arrives, prices are good now and are likely to be pushed lower once the 9780 hits the shops in the next few weeks. Again, the extra megapixels just aren’t worth paying the extra for.

A RIM spokesman called the 9780 a “necessary upgrade” today. I’m sorry, but I’d have to disagree.

So RIM has dumped the mechanical click screen of the original Storm completely and has replaced it with a brand new system. And having spent nearly an hour in the company of its successor – the BlackBerry Storm 2 – I can confirm that it’s a huge improvement.

The Storm 2 uses a system of four software-controlled electro-mechanical actuators (which sit behind the screen), to give a sort of localised haptic feedback. Press the screen anywhere on its surface and it gives feedback in response – but this is like no other feedback vibration I’ve experienced before. Incredibly, pressing the screen feels just like clicking a button, and it’s very responsive too.

Coupled with the BlackBerry OS’s effective auto correction, I managed to get up to a rapid typing speed instantly, and because it’s multitouch, you don’t have to wait to finish one key press before beginning another.

It really is a revelation to type on, whether it’s being used in portrait or full Qwerty landscape mode. I’ve always preferred hardware keyboards, but this could finally sway me. I’ll reserve final judgement for when I’ve had a longer play with the phone (expect a review very soon).

I do have reservations, however, and the first is that, at times, it felt as if it might be too sensitive – more than once I found myself holding the phone and clicking by accident. Also, RIM has yet to implement a rival to the iPhone’s pinch-to-zoom gesture in its web browser, preferring the simpler, yet less-effective, double tap to zoom approach.

How about the rest of the phone, though? Well, The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s sleeker, with formerly sharp edges softened and corners rounded a little. The new screen system also means there’s no unsightly gap around the edges of the display for dust and crumbs to collect in.

The speaker has moved from the rear of the phone to the bottom edge and the phyiscal buttons below the screen have been replaced . Otherwise it’s a very similar size and weight to the original.

The screen is the same size as before – measuring 3.25in and boasting a 360 x 480 resolution that offers dark blacks and good contrast. The battery is identical – a 1,400mAh lithium polymer unit. The camera is still 3.2-megapixels with an LED flash and there’s assisted GPS, and all the usual smartphone toys: Bluetooth, ambient light , proximity and accelerometer sensors.

However, version 5 of the BlackBerry OS makes its debut. One new feature demonstrated to us this morning was the “flying cursor” and multitouch text-select facility (pictured below). Again it looks like someone at RIM has been putting serious thought into this: it’s straightforward to fire up and the large, finger-friendly handles used to adjust the selection make it easy to get precisely the selection you need.

Other additions include direct access to the connections menu and clock screen from the home screen, plus an all new version of BlackBerry Messenger.

The touchscreen and OS aren’t the only additions, either. With the Storm 2, RIM has filled the gaping hole in the first Storm’s specification and added Wi-Fi. Storage has been boosted too, from just 128MB of flash memory to 256MB plus a further 2GB for data storage.

Suffice to say, I walked away from my brief demo this morning very impressed indeed. In completely revamping the touchscreen, RIM has made an extremely brave move and one that looks like it could pay off.

We’re expecting a review sample to arrive very soon, so watch this space for our final verdict.

Front on, the most interesting item is slap bang in the middle: a trackpad. This works almost identically to a normal laptop trackpad, except you press it to select on an item. Opinion in the PC Pro office is so far mixed: I found it intuitive, though it’s a little fiddly as you can’t jump about the screen as quickly as I’d like, whereas our esteemed news & features editor, Barry Collins, simply couldn’t get on with it at all.

There’s a full Qwerty keyboard, which is usable but not spectacular. This is mainly because the buttons feel a little cheap and plasticky (as does the whole phone), but also because it isn’t the widest of devices.

The 8520’s most heralded innovation, however, is the introduction of these three buttons: one for skipping back a track, one for jumping forward, and one for pause/play. They sit atop the unit and work well in practice, though obviously the BlackBerry’s music player is hardly going to rival the iPhone’s.

The two bobbles you see down the right-hand side act as the volume controls, and there are a further two “bobble buttons” elsewhere: one on either side, roughly in the middle of the unit. One activates voice commands, the other the 2mp digital camera (which also shoots video).

The screen is also worth a mention. It’s not big, with just a 320 x 240 resolution, but it’s sharp, bright and clear – if not as vibrant as the BlackBerry Bold. Crucially for some, it also lacks 3G and GPS radios.

We’ll be putting the Curve through our full range of tests over the coming days, but it’s undoubtedly got a tough fight on its hands. Competition comes from the Nokia E63, the Nokia E71 and RIM’s own BlackBerry 8900 – even though the 8520 is being priced at a competitive £200 inc VAT on pay-as-you-go contracts.

That’s certainly the case with the BlackBerry Storm, which we’ve just had our very first play with ahead of receiving proper review samples next week. It’s RIM’s first
touchscreen phone but that’s not the contentious thing. As we’ve highlighted in our previous news stories, the 3.25in 480 x 360 screen is not only tappable, but also clickable.

RIM is clearly attempting to steal a march on the competition. Every man and his dog has a touchscreen phone now and some are better than others but no one has yet come up with this concept. It works like this: you press the screen to highlight a button, then press the screen in to click, a bit like the trackpad on the latest Apple MacBook range.

Is this because it’s a completely mad idea? Or does it actually work? Just like the MacBook trackpad, we suspect it will have a mixed reception. In our brief tete-a-tete with the device we found navigation, especially with the web browser was something that we had to ‘get used to’ rather than something that was instantly intuitive.

We can certainly see the benefit for touchscreen typing – we’ve always found having something physical to click preferable to simply tapping away at an unresponsive plate of glass or plastic. And after a few sentences we found that “The quick brown fox…” was beginning to get up to something of a trot. We particularly liked the way the keyboard switched from full Qwerty to a 20-key predictive pad depending on the orientation of the screen, thanks to an accelerometer inside.

The software on the handsets we tested clearly wasn’t final build (it launches on the 14th, so fingers crossed), so we’ll hold off on passing judgement just now. But we’ll have a full production model very soon – keep an eye on this site for the full review.