The revamp wagons appear to be circling around the BlackBerry Storm as it appears the handset will soon be picking up Wi-Fi connectivity.
After a middling reaction worldwide for the innovative click/touchscreen device, one of the main gripes (slightly annoying text input aside) is that the handset comes sans Wi-Fi, a staple on most BlackBerrys.
But sources over at Slashgear have apparently confirmed that a new version of the Storm (called the Storm 2 crazily) will be coming with Wi-Fi, although there's no chat on whether this will be a new handset or just a refresh.
Failure?
What's interesting as this could easily be perceived as an admission of failure over the decision to force users to totally rely on 3G for data from Vodafone. When TechRadar interviewed them at the launch of the Storm, it was pretty clear that the reason for no Wi-Fi was to show people how easy it is to work over HSDPA (and possibly to raise data revenue for the network).
But business and pro-sumer (which is an accurate but revolting label) users like their Wi-Fi for exactly the opposite reason: reliable connections in places they know with a fast data transfer rate, so the decision to remove it angered a large proportion of the demographic.
So will the Storm 2 be the device that fixes it all? The 'source' has also said there will be a good few upgrades on the device beyond Wi-Fi, so we'll look forward to RIM's next 'iPhone slayer' if there ever can be such a thing.
Via SlashGear
