Thoughts On The BlackBerry StormThoughts On The BlackBerry Storm

People actually waited in line for Research In Motion's first touch-screen BlackBerry, so you know this baby was highly anticipated. Since its release about three weeks ago, it's seen some mixed reviews. I decided to test and live with the Storm for a few weeks before publishing my thoughts. Read on to see if the Storm lives up to the expectations and hype.Hardware

It's easy to tell that a lot of work went into designing the Storm, and it shows. The handset looks pretty darn good, and it has just enough weight to make it feel solid in the hand. The 3.25-inch touch screen takes up most of the real estate on the face, but there's also a row of keys that include talk, BlackBerry, return, and end buttons. The screen looks fantastic, and it has a brilliant display of colors and contrast. With a 480-by-360 resolution, it's technically better than the BlackBerry Bold, but the difference in pixel density makes the Bold a bit better. Still, text and video look great on the Storm, and you won't be disappointed. Because the screen actually physically depresses like a button, I was concerned that it would look or feel cheap. I'm also happy to report that the build quality of the screen looks solid and reliable.

The handset's mainly blackish gray, with a silver band along the outline. Unfortunately, like the Bold, the band looks predisposed to scrapes, which is why I wish RIM would have included a case out of the box. There are a few issues with the hardware, though. First and foremost is that the backlight leaks out slightly where the screen meets the button. It's actually not that noticeable, and I'm probably nit-picking, but it drove me crazy at night, and I don't know how well the physical buttons will hold up over time. Additionally, at .55 inches it's a bit thick, but it still slips easily into a pocket.

The device is definitely a head-turner and may garner interest. Over the last few months I've rocked an iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, Touch Diamond, Samsung Innov8, and others, and the Storm's the only one I've been asked about by a stranger on the train.

The Touch Screen And The Keyboard

But pretty phones aren't what BlackBerry users want, right? RIM is known for its messaging capabilities, and the Storm ditches real keys. Is it a mistake? When I first got my hands on the Storm, I was impressed with the virtual keyboard. After spending a few weeks shooting off e-mails and texts on the go, I still really like it.

By now, you should know that the Storm uses RIM's SurePress technology. This means the touch-screen can be used two ways: hovering over an icon or letter will highlight it blue, and physically pressing the screen down will select it. It definitely takes time to get used to this, as I'm used to barely grazing my touch screens for input.

Typing isn't going to be as quick as a BlackBerry with a physical keyboard like the Bold or a Curve, and I honestly don't know if any virtual keyboard will ever be. One hiccup is that you have to wait for the screen to be fully depressed and rise back up to punch in another letter. It's not going to be as powerful a messaging machine as previous RIM smartphones, but I found the Storm to be easy to use for messaging and e-mails on the move, and solid enough to compose long e-mails.

Holding the phone in portrait mode brings up the SureType keyboard that can be found on devices like the Pearl. I had an irrational hatred of SureType before the Storm, but now I really like it. It uses predictive technology to assume the words you want and I found it to be more accurate than I thought it could be when I was using proper English. It also was easy to fire off texts with one hand, but completely useless for entering URLs.

Holding the phone in landscape mode brings up the full QWERTY keyboard, and I thought it would be the primary way I would input text. But once I customized my predictive dictionary, I only really used this version of the keyboard to enter URLs, and throw some slang into my texts. Once I got used to the input method, I was able to get to about 75% of my typing speed with a physical keyboard on a smartphone. I ran into a few spelling errors, but I liked the auto-correction and apostrophe-adding features.

RIM was trying to make typing on a touch screen be as fast and efficient as using physical buttons, and I don't think it quite accomplished that. I found the Storm's keyboard easy to use but I could easily see people hating it. As always, try before you buy.

Software

One of the main reasons the Storm was trashed by the likes of David Pogue is because the software wasn't ready. While the Bold seemed like ultimate refinement of the BlackBerry OS, the Storm came out a buggy, laggy mess. The accelerometer would take half a week to change orientation, opening up programs would be delayed, and there were at least a half dozen times when I wanted to chuck it out a window.

After snooping online I read that removing the VZ Navigator helps -- I did that and noticed a dramatic improvement. But the real change came with the 4.7.0.75 firmware upgrade that was rolled out this weekend. Once I put that onto my device, the difference was incredible: the accelerometer was faster than any phone out there, and most of the delay was removed. It seems to me that the product was shoveled out to be available for the Thanksgiving shopping week even though it desperately needed a little time in the oven.

With that said, the iPhone needed a few firmware updates, too, and it's still a little buggy. The Storm is rocking the 4.7 operating system, and it's pretty much the same BlackBerry OS you know and love. Sure, there have been some changes to handle the touch interface (like larger icons), but it's pretty much what you'd expect. If you're a seasoned user you'll have no problem hitting the BlackBerry button many, many, many times, and it's not that hard for new users to get into the flow.

But, you can definitely tell that this OS wasn't built from the ground up with touch in mind like some of the competition. One of the main adjustments (besides the keyboard) is getting used to touch navigation instead of the trackball. Scrolling can be a pain in the you know what, as RIM didn't take the hint from the iPhone and G1 that inertia is key for navigating long Web pages or documents with touch. The worst is installing an application: you have to manually scroll down for about a week to accept the terms and install. This is obviously a minor point, and one that could be fixed with an update, but it's quite annoying.

The Storm is still a BlackBerry, so that means it's very good with e-mail. There's support for up to 10 e-mail accounts in a unified in-box from the likes of Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell Groupwise, and a bunch of personal Web-based accounts. You can search, mark, and organize e-mails with ease, but I was a bit quicker at composing e-mails with phones that had physical keyboards. Still, I was able to shoot out messages at a decent clip.

Text messages show up in a threaded format, which is always appreciated, and it's easy to shoot off multimedia messages. And yes, having cut and paste easily available does come in handy more often than I thought it would. There's also onboard software to view and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files.

Once you update the firmware, this is a fast and powerful OS that's still a step behind some of its competitors in terms of touch interface. But, you do have very strong messaging capabilities, multitasking (how can you not have this in a modern smartphone?), a big ecosystem, and your IT department shouldn't have many problems letting this on your corporate network.

Multimedia, Browser, Extras

The Storm has basically the same multimedia features as the Bold, but the larger screen makes watching movies and TV shows a delight. It supports enough video formats (MPEG 4, H.263, H.264, WMV, and others), but I would have loved to have some DivX or xvid support. The music player is no iPod, but it displays album art, can easily search through tunes, and the standard headphone jack is always welcome. Mine came with 8 GB of memory via a microSD slot, and that's expandable up to 16 GB so you'll have plenty of room for your media and documents. They include the dreadful Roxio Media Manager for syncing tunes and music, but thankfully it also can be mounted as a drive. RIM has increasingly been making its handsets solid multimedia devices, and the Storm is its best yet.

Browsing the Web with the Storm is a good experience, and it fixes some of the JavaScript and zooming issues I had with the Bold's browser. Zooming is done by a "soft" double tap (where you don't press the screen down), and it's confusing to get at first, but becomes second nature after a while. Most pages load quickly and are properly formatted, but I'd still put the browsing experience behind the iPhone's and the G1's.

I don't use a phone's camera that often, but I know it can come in handy. The Storm packs a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, and video-recording capabilities. I was completely underwhelmed with the camera: it took forever to launch, pictures were washed out, and the flash was unimpressive. On the plus side, video recording was pretty good, you can geo-tag photos, and the Flickr application works really well for those times when you're able to capture a good shot.

Battery life is just OK, as it will barely last a full day of texts, e-mails, browsing, and light media playing. I'd recommend getting a second charger for the office or the car, especially if you use the Bluetooth.

Calls And Connections

If you've seen the annoying commercials, you know that Verizon Wireless' networks is one of its biggest draws, and I did have excellent voice and data coverage around San Francisco. Call quality was superb 95% of the time, but every once and again I noticed some slight hissing.

An extremely annoying thing is that the smartphone lacks a proximity sensor to know when your face is next to the device. Be ready to hit the speaker or mute button a few times with your cheek when you're talking. It's avoidable once you're used to it, but I recommend using a Bluetooth headset if you're a heavy talker. Speaking of which, it was a breeze to pair the Storm with a few headsets. I used a Motorola H680 and a BlueAnt V1 and both were easy to pair, and the Storm gave me good range, too. The lack of Wi-Fi is a major bummer, and somewhat ridiculous. Sure, Verizon's EV-DO 3G network is fast and vast, but it's not as fast as my home connection, and it will never be. BlackBerry users already have to purchase a data plan anyway, so why wouldn't they ease the burden on the 3G network with Wi-Fi? Big V's been known to cripple some of its devices by locking the GPS with its service, or limiting the Bluetooth, and word on the street is that Verizon was definitely the reason the Storm doesn't have Wi-Fi. What makes it even more flabbergasting is that the company just brought the Samsung Omnia stateside, and it packs Wi-Fi.

Overall

The Storm's initial software was utter crap, but the recent upgrade has made it into a really good smartphone, potentially the best Verizon has to offer. If you're a diehard e-mailer, you may want to look at the more refined Bold, or any smartphone with a physical keyboard like the Touch Pro.

But the Storm is a great device to enter the BlackBerry or smartphone world, and it has enough features to make smartphone veterans happy. I've taken the plunge (with a one-year contract) mainly because I have faith that BlackBerry will continue to update the firmware and turn this into an excellent smartphone. The lack of Wi-Fi is frustrating and stupid beyond belief, but I'm a fan of the BlackBerry way and expect better things in the coming year, especially as the RIM app store is unleashed.

What do you think of the Storm? Was there anything else you want me to include? Feel free to drop me a line at [email protected], and if you're into Twitter, you can follow my exploits here.