BlackBerry Storm Review

Messaging:

The messaging options and interface is pretty much the same as before.  AIM is preloaded, previously only available on Sprint, and you also find Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.  Of course, BlackBerry PIN messaging is also along for the ride, as are SMS and MMS standards.  Email is as great as ever, we aren’t connect to a BES but with BIS our emails were delivered instantly and setup is a breeze.

We like the interface enough, and the myriad of messaging options are great, but as mentioned before typing is less than desirable even after the .75 update.  To stay accurate we have to type at half the speed that we can on other devices like the Curve, Xperia X1 and Instinct.  Using the SureType keyboard was better than the QWERTY, but we never liked SureType in the first place.  We mentioned in our review that we weren’t totally sold on iPhone’s keypad, but even still we can type much faster than we can with the Storm.  The Instinct and iPhone are infinitely better because of their autocorrect, but the Storm fails on this front as well.  We’ve had no trouble with it on past RIM units, so we assume that our typing is just that inaccurate and the software just can’t figure out what’s going on.  We don’t blame it, after reading a quickly typed message we couldn’t always figure out what we were trying to say either.  The software update didn’t have any effect on this shortcoming, and we are inclined to think that the root of the problem lies in the hardware.  The bread and butter of past RIM devices has become the Storm’s Achilles Heel.




Connectivity and Data:

The Storm is a global device with dual-band CDMA and quad-band GSM.  It has the ability to connect to high speed data networks across the globe as well; on the GSM side it has 3G on the 2100MHz band for Europe and Asia, and here at home EVDO Rev. A for Verizon.  Locally you’ll find Bluetooth 2.0 with support for the HSP, HFP 1.5, DUN, PBA, A2DP, AVRC profiles.  Unfortunately there is no Wi-Fi, though with Verizon’s expansive 3G network and the Storm’s required data plan most users won’t miss it too much.

The browsing experience is the best on a BlackBerry yet, hands down.  Pages render well, but not perfectly.  For example, on our homepage the news text overwrote the pictures.  At times pages loaded quickly, but other times they took longer than we would have expected over Rev. A speeds. PhoneArena has taken anywhere from 40s to over a two minutes to load in our testing.  YouTube videos play via m.youtube.com, but video quality was quite poor.



The browser does not reformat text to fit the display, an annoyance for sure.  Zooming is achieved by double taping the screen (no clicks) and the Escape key zooms back out.  Each double tap will zoom in a bit further, but Escape takes you all the way out.  The screen play renders its ugly head again while browsing; when panning around a page the screen moves with your fingers and butts up against the sides.  Overall the browsing experience is great though, it took a major drawback of the RIM OS and turned it into an overwhelming strength.

BlackBerry Desktop Manager handles desktop sync as always.  It is used to manage calendar, tasks, contacts and email synchronization with your desktop.  You can also use the data cable to load media onto the memory card, and Media Sync will allow for iTunes syncing of non-DRM files, like we’ve seen with other recent BlackBerries.