BlackBerry Storm dissected: button mechanism revealed

We got hands dirty with the BlackBerry Storm just before the weekend, and you’ll find our first-impressions video right here. However, we haven’t yet had the time (okay, unbelievable courage) to mimic the actions of the chaps over at phoneWreck – namely to completely gut their review Storm to see how it all fits together.

Okay, so dissections of gadgets are nothing new but the Storm has served up a novel take on touch-screen technology, in the form of its clickable display. Which begs the question: how did RIM turn an entire handset screen into a button? Well, phoneWreck’s teardown provides the answer. More after the cut.

Mind you, it’s not a very exciting revelation. The Storm’s button-like screen is facilitated by... a button behind the screen. Look closely at the image here and you’ll see that there’s a small magnesium-alloy disc button sitting slap-bang in the centre, behind the screen. This in turn is depressed by a little plastic pimple behind the screen’s frame.

There, we told you it wasn’t very exciting, didn’t we? Fortunately, the entirety of phoneWreck’s teardown is worth a read, so we urge you to head on over there and take a look.

[ phoneWreck]