Blackberry Storm - Initial Observations
Posted: 2008-11-22 12:07am
There has been a lot of anticipation for this device, and since I now have the pleasure of owning one, I thought I'd write up some quick thoughts. I moved to the Storm from the iPhone 3G 16GB (before owning the iPhone 3G I had a BB 8120), so I think I have a pretty good perspective on this phone for people who are looking at the Storm as either a Blackberry fan or as someone who likes the iPhone but wants to be on the Verizon network.
For those who don't already know, here's a picture of the device:
It's certainly a looker and it fits comfortably into my hand. I've only had it since this morning (I've had it hooked up to my corporate exchange server all day and been receiving emails) but I think I've seen enough to do some pros/cons.
The Good:
Messaging performance: Hey, it's a Blackberry and we all expect first class email out of RIM devices. The Storm delivers, but in more ways than I expected. It doesn't just handle email, contacts and calendaring as well as other Blackberries, but it also has excellent support for the major IM platforms built in and unlike the iPhone, they can run in the background with full wakeup support. Me likey very much.
The screen: It's gorgeous and it seems to be sharper and have better color definition than the iPhone, if only by a bit.
Clickable screen: This is the main even and the focus of the advertising campaign for this phone. You see unlike the iPhone, you actually press down on the touch screen to select and item while tapping the screen without depressing it merely selects the item you are interested in. Not everyone loves this feature judging by what my co-workers and various reviewers said, but I found that I quickly adapted to it and now I am in love with this feature. It requires just the right amount of pressure to click and it feels very natural. Bravo RIM.
New Blackberry OS: The new OS is very sharp looking and while old Blackberry users will feel right at home, the new OS has large colorful buttons, sharp looking text and some nice intuitive design choices without needlessly discarding the Blackberry UI conventions. It's not quite as seamless as the iPhone OS, but it's still a good, solid design.
Visual Voicemail: Shameless ripoff of one of the iPhone's best features, but it works well. The only caveat is that Verizon is charging $3 a month to enable this feature! Not a big deal to me (since my company picks up the phone tab) but I imagine others won't be so pleased by this.
Camera: The 3.2 megapixel camera is very sharp and takes some very respectable quality images. Much better than the lame camera on the iPhone 3G.
Form Factor: Feels solid in my hand and is an excellent size, weight and shape.
The Bad:
Not enough apps: This was to be expected, but there aren't a lot of custom Storm apps out there yet, and even the Blackberry first party ones aren't that great. The Facebook client is just okay (it's nowhere near as good as the new iPhone Facebook client) and the IM apps while solid, aren't enough to overcome the iPhones huge advantage in developer support. This will likely change in the future, but for now it's slim pickings out there.
Accelerometer lag: The accelerometer isn't very snappy and is slower to recognize than the one on the iPhone (which isn't that great either to be honest). I expect this to improve with time, but for now it's a little slow.
VZ Navigator: The Navigator app is superior to the Google Maps application on the iPhone in many ways, but it's not free. Boo.
Internet Browser: It isn't nearly as good as Safari on the iPhone, but then even Safari isn't nearly as good as it needs to be for serious browsing.
The Ugly:
Performance: Sometimes the performance on the Storm is good and fluid, but this isn't exactly the norm. The UI tends to get bogged down and times and it can get quite frustrating when you are trying to do complex things like taking a photo and sending it as an MMS. Given the hardware in the Storm this should improve with software updates, but for now it has problems which is unacceptable. RIM needs to fix this ASAP.
Conclusion: Overall I'm quite happy with the BB Storm. It doesn't have the app selection of the iPhone and the performance is sub-par, although in fairness these were both problems that plagued the iPhone at launch. Given a little time I think this device is going to turn into a big winner for RIM and for now I can set aside the problems and enjoy the device even as a 1.0. Great job RIM, now get cracking on fixing the performance and get a decent Facebook client out there so I don't miss my iPhone!
For those who don't already know, here's a picture of the device:
It's certainly a looker and it fits comfortably into my hand. I've only had it since this morning (I've had it hooked up to my corporate exchange server all day and been receiving emails) but I think I've seen enough to do some pros/cons.
The Good:
Messaging performance: Hey, it's a Blackberry and we all expect first class email out of RIM devices. The Storm delivers, but in more ways than I expected. It doesn't just handle email, contacts and calendaring as well as other Blackberries, but it also has excellent support for the major IM platforms built in and unlike the iPhone, they can run in the background with full wakeup support. Me likey very much.
The screen: It's gorgeous and it seems to be sharper and have better color definition than the iPhone, if only by a bit.
Clickable screen: This is the main even and the focus of the advertising campaign for this phone. You see unlike the iPhone, you actually press down on the touch screen to select and item while tapping the screen without depressing it merely selects the item you are interested in. Not everyone loves this feature judging by what my co-workers and various reviewers said, but I found that I quickly adapted to it and now I am in love with this feature. It requires just the right amount of pressure to click and it feels very natural. Bravo RIM.
New Blackberry OS: The new OS is very sharp looking and while old Blackberry users will feel right at home, the new OS has large colorful buttons, sharp looking text and some nice intuitive design choices without needlessly discarding the Blackberry UI conventions. It's not quite as seamless as the iPhone OS, but it's still a good, solid design.
Visual Voicemail: Shameless ripoff of one of the iPhone's best features, but it works well. The only caveat is that Verizon is charging $3 a month to enable this feature! Not a big deal to me (since my company picks up the phone tab) but I imagine others won't be so pleased by this.
Camera: The 3.2 megapixel camera is very sharp and takes some very respectable quality images. Much better than the lame camera on the iPhone 3G.
Form Factor: Feels solid in my hand and is an excellent size, weight and shape.
The Bad:
Not enough apps: This was to be expected, but there aren't a lot of custom Storm apps out there yet, and even the Blackberry first party ones aren't that great. The Facebook client is just okay (it's nowhere near as good as the new iPhone Facebook client) and the IM apps while solid, aren't enough to overcome the iPhones huge advantage in developer support. This will likely change in the future, but for now it's slim pickings out there.
Accelerometer lag: The accelerometer isn't very snappy and is slower to recognize than the one on the iPhone (which isn't that great either to be honest). I expect this to improve with time, but for now it's a little slow.
VZ Navigator: The Navigator app is superior to the Google Maps application on the iPhone in many ways, but it's not free. Boo.
Internet Browser: It isn't nearly as good as Safari on the iPhone, but then even Safari isn't nearly as good as it needs to be for serious browsing.
The Ugly:
Performance: Sometimes the performance on the Storm is good and fluid, but this isn't exactly the norm. The UI tends to get bogged down and times and it can get quite frustrating when you are trying to do complex things like taking a photo and sending it as an MMS. Given the hardware in the Storm this should improve with software updates, but for now it has problems which is unacceptable. RIM needs to fix this ASAP.
Conclusion: Overall I'm quite happy with the BB Storm. It doesn't have the app selection of the iPhone and the performance is sub-par, although in fairness these were both problems that plagued the iPhone at launch. Given a little time I think this device is going to turn into a big winner for RIM and for now I can set aside the problems and enjoy the device even as a 1.0. Great job RIM, now get cracking on fixing the performance and get a decent Facebook client out there so I don't miss my iPhone!