The highly anticipated touch-screen RIM BlackBerry Storm seemed promising with its innovative SurePress touch-screen, the BlackBerry feature set and a competitive $199.99 price. Instead of a torrential downpour of functionality and style the Storm produces a trickling of speed and a lackluster design.
Setting Aside Expectations of the Storm
The BlackBerry Storm offers a wide array of features through the BlackBerry OS 4.7. The ability to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files is a nice addition. The Storm carries on the BlackBerry e-mail capabilities with the usual support for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, and syncing with your company's BlackBerry Enterprise server. You can add up to 10 POP3 or IMAP4 accounts.
The BlackBerry Storm offers a full HTML web browser so web pages look the same as they would on your computer. Web browsing on previous BlackBerry devices has always been subpar and while the Storm offers an improved web browsing experience, other touch-screen devices like Apple's iphone and Samsung's Instinct are easier to use and perform better.
The Storm's GPS experience was superb. The only negative point of the Storm's GPS was the voice turn-by-turn direction sounded blown out at higher volumes. The Storm was quick to correct course changes after missing turns. Two minutes was all the time it took for the Storm to locate and triangulate. This was the only feature that lived up to its promise.
BlackBerry Storm Phone Quality
As with most Verizon phones, the Storm has good call quality and does not drop calls. The speakerphone was less than impressive, but this is not unique to the Storm.
The Storm's Touch-Screen
The video quality pixilated somewhat at higher speeds and during buffering, but other than the iphone's superior video playback, the Storm held up against other smart phones and touch-screens. The screen is a beautiful 3.25 in. VGA glass with 65K colors and a 480x360-pixel resolution.
The SurePress touch-screen in theory seems lovely but in actuality it is a very frustrating experience. The operating system according to Joshua Topolsky, wasn't designed for a touch-screen, rather the touch-screen function was added to the existing OS making for an unintuitive user experience.
- The ability to cut and paste text is the only function that is easy to use.
- Different applications use different combinations of the touch-screen's capabilities making acclimation to the device much longer than other devices.
- Touching the screen can highlight an image while double tapping will zoom in closer.
- To activate a link you must touch and press through the screen. Initially this seems very clever but is counter-intuitive when using the Storm for any length of time.
- To input text you must push the screen much like a tactile keyboard.
- Touching the key you want to use highlights it letting you know this will be the letter of input. This function is meant to eradicate errors while typing but mistakes still prevail.
- Pushing down on the screen cannot be done quickly and the size of the keys is somewhat cramped, so those with larger thumbs will have difficulty using the Storm.
The Bottom Line
The variety of applications is wonderful until you actually use them. Unlike other BlackBerry devices the performance is very sluggish and has many bugs. The screen flickers and goes blank often while turning the screen to landscape mode. Using more than one function at a time can slow the phone down and cause programs to stop all together. When using the music player, opening the camera or the web browser can cause the song being played to skip or pause.
A nice idea, the BlackBerry Storm falls short in reality and in comparison to other touch-screens. If you want a BlackBerry, go with the BlackBerry Bold.
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