A week with my Blackberry Storm

[S.SubZero]

My Verizon contract came up for renewal recently, and while I was tempted to jump ship to AT&T for an iPhone I decided I liked Verizon's service enough that I'd give them another two years. But I did need a new phone to replace my old Chocolate Flip. I decided to get the new Blackberry Storm, Blackberry's first all touch-screen phone.

You can google this thing and see all kinds of reviews, mostly negative. My review comes from someone who knows the iPhone a bit (I own an iPod Touch and have friends with iPhones) and can give at least a semi-accurate comparison, as well as the Storm's function in general.

Compared to the iPhone:
- The interface is very slow. The main menu seems to crawl compared to the iPhone's slip-sliding quick menus. Selecting stuff isn't too bad, and things like music and videos don't suffer any slowness. This just makes the terrible menu speed all the weirder, since it uses a very basic scheme that doesn't look like it would require much processing power.

- The browser is not bad but ain't Safari. The Blackberry browser is fairly compatible, but the touch-screen has problems recognizing my clicks at the minimum zoom, and like the iPhone lots of pages are unreadable at this size anyway. I do have one page I frequent that is a bit too heavy to handle and it doesn't support all the code of the page. Yes, youtube videos work.

- There's hardly any apps. There's a Myspace app, Flickr, Facebook.. I got Flycast working which is nice for music, but the app selection dries up quick. There's more businessy apps installable from the web (no 'jailbreaking' required) but most of them involve paying for them. Games? HAHAHA. No. It comes with two games, neither of which is solitaire, and this is depressing. The few games I've seen online are designed for older Blackberries and are kind of weak (and not free).

- No wi-fi. None. Everything is over the data network. I usually only have wi-fi access at home so this isn't a big deal for me, but for many people this is a major turnoff. The Blackberry data plan on Verizon is "unlimited" but from what I read it's only unlimited to about 5GB a month. Huh?

- On-screen keypad - Many people say they type slow on it compared to both the iPhone and dedicated hardware keypads. In landscape mode I don't do bad, but portrait uses this stupid "SureType" pad that puts two characters on a key and tries to guess what you're typing. Luckily it can be switched to the old numeric keypad type like a non-data phone would have. While it's sad there's no full keypad in portrait, unlike the iPhone the chances an app can work in landscape is about 100%. So I never *need* the portrait keypad.

- Multitasking?! Unlike the iPhone, I can fire up an app and then go back to the menu with the app running. This caught me off guard with MSN Messenger, as I was getting IMs and didn't know how. Took a bit to figure out Messenger was still running in the background. It also integrates nicely into the other messaging systems of the phone, so I can chat over SMS, Messenger, or email, and it's all in one list.

- No dedicated app to move stuff to the phone. Vista natively sees it as a data phone and I can happily drop music and pictures and videos in the root directory, and then the phone figures out where to put it. The only downside is things tend to "disappear" into the phone. I copied a couple of music files which have now been moved somewhere I can't access. ; ;

- No dedicated app to do file management! Unlike the iPhone/iPod Touch, I don't need to be tethered to a computer to manage files. I can delete, move, copy, and whatever else right in the phone's menus. Ahh.. the iPod *really* annoyed me when it wouldn't let me delete a song without being tethered. GRRR.

- Scrolling. While the Storm has your typical "finger flick" scrolling, it's not as natural as the iPhone, and like the menus are slow, scrolling is slow too. It seems much more taxed trying to scroll even simple pages like Craigslist.

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General use:

I like using it, tho I hope they can do something about the interface. They did released on software update so far which supposedly helped but I didn't really notice. It has a nice clock, which with a landscape cradle (BB sells one) it could conceivably replace a typical nightstand alarm clock. The "bedside mode" has options to dim the screen, disable the message LED, and disable the radio, so this becomes even more possible. It only supports one alarm, which is lame (my Chocolate Flip had three separate alarms) but the screen tells you the next alarm time which is good for me since I'm alarm paranoid (DID I SET IT AGGG CHECK AGAIN!).

The camera is decent, it has a strong flash and is 3.2MP which is good for a camera phone. Quality is ok, but it's not meant to replace a Canon or something. The big gripe is it's.. surprise.. SLOW. It's not for Kodak moments. It takes several seconds to initialize and capture.

It's not a bad phone, but yeah, it's definitely a "1.0" version product, and I already know Blackberry is either going to abandon the full touch-screen idea or quickly have a followup product and they will abandon this poor thing. The negative reviews, almost Vista-like in their ferocity, only means it will come that much sooner. I'm going to stick with it though. Only one year and 50 weeks left before I quality for a new phone.

If you are on AT&T and don't have an iPhone yet.. what? If you are on Verizon or another carrier that offers the Storm and your contract is coming up and you're not sure which to get, I recommend going to a carrier store and fooling with one before deciding. My one friend with an iPhone says my Storm is awful, but he also can't get IM's most of the time since he's too busy playing some bubble popping game.

[zapionics<alt>]

Your comments are very timely as I'm thinking about a new phone.
I've been trying to find something practical for business use but also providing multi-media and web browsing features while being compact and stylish.

Well there is not much, the iPhone is quite large, the HTC Diamond is laggy... the iPhone seems to have tons of software for it with huge scope for more... the Windows based phones have some potential for a boom in software but they seem to come with all the problems of Windows as well...

Other phones, such as Nokia, dont have the nifty touch screen interface so usability is much worse and probably not acceptable anymore...

The storm seemed promising but I think you killed it for me as I cannot stand a laggy slow UI...

The HTC HD seems ok, but I suspect is laggy as well... anyhow its not sold here yet...

So it looks like the iPhone for me

[zsaz1029]

Fantastic little review S.SubZero! Thanks!

[houdini]

hey sub. it's been too long since i've been around!

i just got the storm with the latest software patch preinstalled.

my first gripe is that the screen is active while i'm on a call and though there are apps that you can download for free or for $2, it's annoying that i can't hold it between my noggin and shoulder without fear of pressing a button or activating a program or muting...

my second gripe is that i haven't figured out how to call someone quick like i used to on my 8830. i used to just type a couple of letters or initials and bang, i'm calling already. now i have to call up my address book and then the keypad... have you figured out anything in the month+ that you've had it or did you return it already?

houdini

[S.SubZero]

I still have it.

For calling someone quick I hold down the green button which pops up the contact list, then scroll to the name I want and hit the green button again.

I haven't run into any problems with hitting buttons while talking on the phone. I can't really rest it on my shoulder though, it's too thin.

In the latest leaked firmware they have an option to have a full keyboard in portrait mode, yay! I don't know much else about it since I won't play with leaked firmwares.

I'm used to the Storm now. I may still be in a phase, since it's my first smartphone and the "email anywhere" thing is still blowing me away.

[pcmanabc]

i don't like bb storm ,i think iphone is more amazing.