[First Published, December 15, 2008. Revisions added May 29, 2009]
The following is my review of the Blackberry Storm 9530 on Verizon, running firmware release 4.7.0.76, which is an unofficial release for vzw customers bur fixes many bugs in earlier versions. This review will focus on the phone itself and try not to dwell on the well codumented bugs in the OS, though they will be mentioned in a few places.
First some qualifiers:
- I am a Blackberry User and do like the product though like everything they evolve and improve over time. There are things I like about them and some I don’t, This will be touched on in the body of this review
- I am NOT, repeated NOT a fan of Apple Macintosh, and do not now nor have I ever owned an iPhone. I played with it a few times and have not been impressed. It seemed more like a toy to me than a phone.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get on with the review, shall we?
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
I wasn’t completely sure what to expect when I heard of the new touch screen Blackberry, I’ve used both the 8830 WE and Curve 9330 for several months now and one of the things I liked the most about Berries are the fact that they come with physical QWERTY keys; though I’m not super impressed with the actual layout, for that I consider the Voyager by LG to be the standard by which all others should be measured by
I REALLY REALLY like this phone! From the first glance at it you cant help but be impressed with the looks of the thing and when you turn it on and see all of the power packed into this little device you are NOT disappointed.
FORM FACTOR
I really like the physical design of this phone. It is average sized for a Blackberry, but thinner than most. The touch screen takes up MOST of the front of it, but RIM wisely chose to leave a few physical buttons (lock, mute, left and right convenience keys, volume, Send Key, Menu Key — aka the Blackberry Button –, Escape/Back, and End/Power. It uses the standard 3.5 headset jack which will work with a standard headphone, so no more hunting for adapters.
I really like how it feels in my hand, both the Curve and Bold are too light IMHO and seem so lack mass. I like the feeling of actually holding something.That’s also one of the reasons I am not impressed with the iPhone.
The touch screen is HARD, and if it’s not made out of actual glass then it is something similar and is definitely not the cheap LCD you see in most phones. I have a hard time believing it could be scratched seriously by everyday use. Just don’t put it in the same pocket as your keys and I am guessing you will be fine.
There is really only one design flaw as far as I an concerned but I will get to that when I review the camera component,
INTERFACE
The interface on this phone is basically an evolution of previous BB OS versions and is almost exactly the same as the Bold’s OS 4.6. Many iPhone fanboys don’t like it since they have to look inside folders to find things but that is actually one of the things I like about it. Veteran Blackerry users will feel roght at home. Newbies will have a bit of a lerning curve, but once you understand some basic things you will find that the phone is ver intuative and powerfull.
You can roganzie your apps accordingly. For example you can put all of your IM clients in one folder, social networking in another folder, media apps in yet another folder, etc. By default newly installed apps go in one called Downloads (this can be changed if you really want) and there is one folder called Applications for general applications. Heavily used apps can go on the main home screen. One thing I have never liked is that these custom settings are on a theme by theme basis and thus every time you change themes you have to reoranize your icons. I really wish they would add an option to have these settings global or theme specific.
All (or almost all) of your settings are controled under the Options icon (it looks like a wrench in the default theme). There also a Setup folder where you can put settings icons for any installed apps that dont properly integrate with the main Options system.
Icons whic you dont want to see at all, can be hidden completely if so desired.
TOUCH SCREEN
The touch screen is probably the most debated feature of the Storm. One of the things that is most important to the core of BlacBerry user base is the physical keys, so it is no surprise that weather a touch screen BlackBerry was even appropriate. RIM wanted to expand into the consumer market more and since touch screens area all the fave now (much as flip phones were a couple years ago) they decided to create a touch screen BB to compete in those markets. Given that they the first 400,000 that they manufactured for the launch in less than a week and it took them less than two months to sell over a million of them I would say that they succeeded. [As a side note, a BlackBerry flip has since been launched on several other carriers and is expected on Verizon this summer.]
How the touch screen works is that you touch the icon or link you want to select and then actually press (yes press, the screen actually moves) the screen to activate it. That’s why it is called SurePress. This has the effect of the user having fewer mis selections, but until you get used to it it also seems to also slow you down. I personally haven’t felt that it was slow other than in the very beginning, but others disagree. Touch typists in particular have complained alot about it.
THE CAMERA
The Blackberry Curve us far and away the BEST mobile phone camera that I have ever used. Period. This includes the iPhone which I played with briefly in an AT&T Store. That being said, the Storm has a lot to live up to.
Okay, first up is the physical design. The phone seems to have been designed for a left handed person. The camera is opened and pictures taken with the RIGHT convenience key which is on the same side as the volume controls which also serve to control the zoom. This seems like a good idea until you realize that the design then puts the camera lenses and flash very near to where a right handed person would normally put their fingers. More than once I have blocked either the lens (when my finger moved unexpectedly) or even more often the flash, resulting in dark grainy pictures. They really should have thought more about this as the majority of the American public are RIGHT handed. Maybe I am being too picky there but form factor IS important with something like this where you will need to be using features without consciously putting thought into how to do it. This is a prety serious design flaw, AFIC.
When I took a few snaps with the camera when it was still running the .65 firmware and saying I was disappointed was to put it mildly. The images were all dark and grainy. Fortuity I only played with the phone for about an hour before upgrading to the better firmware (.75, then a few days later .76) and it is a LOT better. It’s still not up to the par of the Curve but then they are still working on things. I would probably say it is just below the Voyager in quality but above the RazorMax. I’ll keep you posted here, the Storm comes with a 3.2 MP digital camera and the Curve only has a 2.0MP camera so theoretically this thing is capable of taking even better picutes. Successive firmware versions (I’m on .147 as of this writing) have improved things somwhat, but there is siill a LOT of work to do before it can be any kind of contender to the other BlackBerries with cameras out there.
The 3.2 MP is a nice improvement over 2.0, but this improvement does not save it; is slow and overall takes only mediocre pictires.
BATTERY LIFE
Like the Curve, this phone has a prety good battery life (two days of light use, a day of heavy use). The original firmware was about half that but it began to improve a lot after OS .90 or so.
APPS
I’m not going to talk too much here otehr than to say that since the Storm has a touch screen instead of a trackbeall and keys, a lot of older apps do not work on it corectly, and since developers were slow to upgrade their apps (it was only ONE device afterall), a lot of people complained that there were not any good apps for it (especially compared to the iPhone, but those same users forgot that the AppStore is a year old now and when it launched it didn’t have a lot either). The same users also complained that you had to hunt for apps for it and there was no one place to get your apps (other than the RIM provided ones that is) but that all changed whenRIM officially launched AppWorld on April 1.
Pickings are still slim compared to the iPhone bit the selection is steadily growing. There are free and paid apps available, but RIM seems to be more interested in quality than QUANTITY apps, as the cheapest price they allow fir apps is $2.99 compared to $0.99 in the Apple App Store. Both Berry Review and Creackberry also have apps stores now to fill in this gap.
MEMORY:
The Storm has a full gig of memory (1024 MB), however only 128 MB can be used for apps. The rest is meant for media storage. This is unfortunate and a major design flaw. Ideally the entire amout would be available for whatever you want, but this is now how any of the other BB’s do things either. At the time of launch 128 MB was the most available on any BlakBerry, but only a month and a half later RIM released the BlakBerry 8900 Curve 2, on TMobile and that has 256 MB avaulable for apps. Not sure why RIM was so stingy on the Storm which is a superior phone to the Curve 2 in most reppects (at least in theory).
WiFi
The Storm does not have WiFo, boys and girls, get over it. I personally could care less. I have WiFi on both the Bold and Curve 8900 and never use it. In side by side tests I’ve done with the Storm, the only way WiFi made any difference was in app downloading. Other than that the EVDO-A network was plenty fast for web surfing.
CONCLUSIONS:
Overall the Storm is a nice phone, but it’s not for everybody. It’s a touch screen BlacBerry. Period. If you are expecting the iPhone or something revolitionary and new than you are probably going to be disapointed.
