A few weeks ago we brought you a preview of the upcoming Storm2 9550, and quite frankly came away unimpressed. We made extra effort to stress that our unit was pre-production however and that we expected many things to be fixed, most notably the "buttons" at the bottom of the screen. Well now we have a retail unit, and indeed most of the issues we encountered have been addressed. The software is smoother, the buttons work and the device just feels better all-around. It's still quite heavy, but the screen feels more solid and typing is a much more plesant experience then the first time around.
The Storm2 is definitely an improvement on the original and we have to think this new version of SurePress is what RIM imagined from the get-go. The screen is static when fully turned off or the capacitive display is touched with anything but bare skin, otherwise it responds with a familiar click. There are now four click points- one on each corner- which allows the phone to register multiple presses. This alone is a major improvment over the Storm, which choked when it received simultaneous inputs.
Initial impressions are good, but we encountered software issues with
both the Storm and our Storm2 preview unit, and inded the keyboard on this unit only had half the keys available and required a wipe to restore. Over the next few days we'll be putting it through the paces to see of this can stack up with the ever-growing list of premimum phones and if RIM finally has the touchscreen competitor the envisioned with the Storm. Stay tuned for a full review soon!
actually rath, if you payed attention, RIM actually reworked all the internals on the phone and many of the external designs as well. The basic OS may look similar but the storm 1 and 2 are very different phones tech wise.
they may look similar but all the iphone designs were ugly from the iphone 1 and stayed ugly, the storm is beautiful looking. that os looks the same as my leak on my storm now! :-) i'm not sure if i'm quite ready to give my storm up now. for anyone looking to upgrade to a blackberry, this is the one!!
Lmao the iPhone design is ugly. I don't understand why you feel you have to put apples product down in order to give props to verizons product. AT&T just announced a record month mostly due to the iPhone. Obviously apple is doing something right. Storm is quite a bit uglier then the iPhone too.
Replyto this commentThis comment is posted in response to #3 ( Show )
First of all...the iPhone did revolutionalize the cell phone market. Everybody can deny it but every since its release phone have tried to be the iPhone "Killer". Second of all...it should be that way. Apple has produced one phone for one carrier (initially). The have invest all of their time/resources into one single device whereas HTC, RIM, Samsung, etc. have a huge variation of products to perfect. Me personally, I like and have had great luck with the BB Storm. I do intend to get the HTC Imagio b/c I like the phone design. The diff. between Verizon and AT&T is that VZW has more than one popular phone. There are always quarterly earnings released about AT&T in which the iPhone has seemed to carry their whole company. So AT&T has one phone. What's going to happen when the exclusivity lifts? Just a question from an unbiased cell phone fan.
Replyto this commentThis comment is posted in response to #5 ( Show )
how is the storm ugly dude?! the iphone is a rectangle with one button in the center, pretty darn ugly and boring if you ask me! no buttons! very piss poor design. they should have kept the same material as the 1st gen iphone for the back, the new back is just too plasticy looking. :-)
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you know what i mean, things that actually light up around the phone! and no blending the buttons in with the screen is a great design foor the storm2. :-)
Replyto this commentThis comment is posted in response to #11 ( Show )
So how is one full touchscreen phone with a black shell any different that another full touchscreen phone with a black shell? I dont see it...they look the same to me....one runs better than the other....
Replyto this commentThis comment is posted in response to #3 ( Show )
many sites had one, including phonearena. what theyre saying is this is the first OFFICIAL unit to get the hands on treatment. all of the others have been pre-production units
Replyto this commentThis comment is posted in response to #6 ( Show )
i work for big red and even tho the iphone is on at&t you'd have to be a fool not to admit that this phone changed the game both in design and in functionality seriously there maybe phones out there that beat the shit out of it in different aspects and the reason for this is because of the iphone! i personally have the storm and like it for the most part...its been good to me and i have yet to have it replaced but look at the form factor... black and touch screen (im aware it has the removable battery & memory card and buttons) when the storm 1st dropped in the stores customers thought we had an iphone. look at the dare, versa, even the 1st voyager & the rogue to the untrained eye (i.e. general customers) they're really close to the iphone. Think about it, if it has a dark housing & large screen on the front that people touch, people automatically think iphone. like it or not it made history and is now part of pop culture there are so many other devices out there that dont even make calls or browse the web that emulate this design
A map for what? Where your comment came from? Cause it looks like your talking about the differences between the VZW and the AT&T 3G network, but when you don't preface with any information, you just look crazy.
All this accomplished is for you to bad-mouth the pre-production model again...it seems you have already made up your minds that you don't like the Storm products. Why didn't you just write a review rather than rehash the problems you had with the original Storm and your pre-production model; you are giving readers a bad vibe before you start. Just do the full review; it can't take that long to put a phone through its paces.
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