BlackBerry Magnum spotted in the wild; RIM's first touchscreen QWERTY

A new Research in Motion BlackBerry device, codenamed Magnum, has been spotted and videotaped in the wild.

It appears to be the company's first touchscreen QWERTY device, and an attempt to bridge the gap between its popular Curve and Bold QWERTY handsets and its Storm touchscreen device.

("Magnum" sound familiar? We first mentioned it back in May 2009.)

Just how practical is a small touchscreen on a QWERTY BlackBerry? From the looks of things, it's more of a stopgap feature implementation more than anything else, but it helps prevent full-touchscreen Android, iPhone, Palm and Windows Mobile handsets outrun BlackBerrys by too large a margin.

In a video, The Cellular Guru reviews a Magnum prototype that lacks a proper working operating system. (This is another RIM sticking point: that the BlackBerry OS is, touch-capable or not, behind the times.)

Still, you can see how a touchscreen fixed QWERTY BlackBerry might operate. Apparent in the video is a larger keyboard than current QWERTY models, as well as RIM's now standard optical trackpad.