A true iPhone rival is looming in the new Blackberry touch screen.  Blackberry continues to evolve since becoming the gold standard for mobile email and its about time they step up to the iPhone.  This is amazing news for all you "crackberry-ers," and is the latest gossip on the heavily anticipated new touch Blackberry.  The Blackberry Thunder, as it is now being called, is rumored to launch later this year. The Blackberry Thunder will be a full touchscreen with only 4 physical keys, send/end, a menu and back key.  The model number for now seems to be the BlackBerry 9500, part of the 9000 series, though it is likely to change.  Rumor has it that the Blackberry Thunder will launch as a worldwide exclusive for the Verizon Network, which should make all you non-Verizon people pretty jealous.

According to the Boy Genius Report the BlackBerry 9000 specs, are as follows: "The BlackBerry 9000 series will include a device with a 480 x 320-pixel touch screen; 1 GB of internal memory; an Intel X-Scale PXA270 processor at 624MHz; GPS; and Wi-Fi. The device will also supposedly include 3G support (multi-band HSPDA) and either a 2 megapixel or 3.2 megapixel digital camera."

Blackberry has been able to keep the Touch Thunder Project hush hush so this is a lot of speculation, nothing has been confirmed yet.  We are diehard technology lovers and cannot wait for the Thunder to materialize!  We will keep you posted.