“I’ve spent the past three days using Verizon Wireless’s new BlackBerry Storm extensively,” Eric Zeman reports for InformationWeek. “In the tests I performed on the phone, the quality and clarity of voice calls was excellent. The speakerphone was nice and loud, and pairing the Storm to Bluetooth headsets (both mono and stereo) was easy.”
“The Storm covers most of the BlackBerry basics well. One area it fails to perform is with battery life. RIM claims that the Storm gets 6 hours of talk time. I completely killed the Storm’s battery in a single day. It had a full charge at 8AM, and by midnight, the Storm was flashing ‘low battery’ warnings at me,” Zeman reports.
“What is it like to type on the Storm? Honestly, I can’t stand it,” Zeman reports. “The Storm’s display is touch sensitive for navigating the menus, swiping up and down and back and forth. In order to actually open folders or applications, you have to press the screen forcefully. The entire screen is one big button. You’ll feel it click, giving you the physical feedback that other touch phones lack. This is fine for selecting applications and interacting with most of the Storm’s features, but it just doesn’t cut it when it comes to typing… Physically pressing the Storm’s screen down to type each letter was just tiresome.”
“Now for the really bad news. The Storm has issues. The review unit I tested experienced severe bugginess and problems all over the place,” Zeman reports. “The accelerometer, for example, rarely works as it is supposed to. I would rotate the phone and wait up to a minute for the phone to recognize that I had turned it on its side. Other times, the phone would randomly switch from vertical to horizontal orientation even though the phone hadn’t been rotated at all. That’s unacceptable.”
“The camera software and video playback software both crashed the phone completely several times, requiring me to pull the battery to reset the Storm,” Zeman reports. “Another issue I experienced was serious lag and lack of responsiveness from the user interface. The Storm would fail to register finger presses, the ‘back’ button worked only about 50 percent of the time, and panning around was slow and jittery. Applications behaved strangely and would randomly quit.”
“If you think I got stuck with a bad unit, think again. In order to be as fair as possible, I requested a second review unit from Verizon Wireless,” Zeman reports. “The second review unit experienced all the same problems and issues… People may have lined up early this morning in eager anticipation of buying the Storm, but if I were a consumer, I would have returned the Storm by now.”
Full review here.
Another excellent* review of RIM’s BlackBerry Storm.
*Excellent for Apple, that is.
RIM’s Storm = Microsoft’s Vista/ME
I played with one for about 10 minutes on release day and was very unimpressed. I see this as another example of a phone/device that I might have been scrambling for two years ago. Now, however, it’s just another example of a phone/device that falls embarrassingly short.
Having a touch sensitive panel as a button obviously has merits, the new MacBooks are obvious examples of that, but like those computer companies offering multi touch computers, RIM seem to have missed with the execution entirely. There are times when a seachange in technology is great (iPhone) but you have to execute it right, at other times you’re best suited to a gradual transformation (Apple Trackpads and lack of touch screen on MacBooks). So far Apple seems to be getting it right from both ends of the innovation spectrum.
I want to know how many returns Verizon is going to have to deal with.
hey guys, while everyone is piling on the Storm, remember that this is Storm version 1.0. the 2007 1.0 iPhone had a lot of issues too, and it is really the 2008 2.0 iPhone that has taken off in popularity. and just like the iPhone, this original Storm’s app store isn’t ready at the initial launch either.
in 2009 RIM will release its 2.0 Storm. nagging problems, including the click-to-type screen, will get fixed. wifi will be added (like Apple added 3G). a decent app store will go on line.
so while the 2008 Storm won’t be a great seller beyond Blackberry aficionados, the 2009 Storm might become a very good product.
this puts pressure on Apple to significantly upgrade the iPhone to 3.0 in 2009 too, matching the capabilities of the Storm it lacks, like a decent camera and bluetooth stereo earphones. and document editing at last. competition is good.
Apple must be really scared now.
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@John E
And when RIM releases Storm 2.0, the iPhone will be on 3.0. As has been talked about, they are behind the initial innovator in this product space … Apple. You can not talk about innovation without remembering that your target is always moving forward. As Wayne Gretzky said “I skate where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” RIM and others are just skating to where AAPL was in June 2007.
What does Apple have in store for 3.0? Have there been any rumors?
where did RIM find 200 people to stand in line… Oh, wait, we are in a recession… People will do anything for money.
Well, at least the removable battery does have a reason to be in the Storm. It’s needed to reset the phone!
@JohnE
Are you really a RIM CEO in disguise on an Apple forum? Boy, are you cushy towards blackberry.
Apple will not sit still and will be years ahead…you sound like Apple now has to play catch up to what??? a camera? Do you really think that Apple, when making the iPhone software, doesn’t already have landscape keyboard and cut and paste? Did they just leave it out and say we will create it later? Apple is at least a year ahead of their own releases, and years ahead of RIMM’s. RIMM ceo’s showed desperation in releasing this ahead of its functionality and they are paying for it bigtime. That thing is a thick brick even in their flashy moving advertisements.
NCMacMan: very funny!
Apple owns a high-end OS and their own SDK and iTunes delivery machine…AT&T;is making billions just clearing a path to stay completely out of Apple’s way.
THAT, folks, is the difference. Verizon’s pride and control COST them dearly…Apple came to them first. Pride and arrogance always lead to doom…the slow moving dumb ox AT&T;won all the way to the bank with simply an open mind and hands off policy.
I went into my local Verizon store over the weekend and had a chance to handle the Storm. First of all, in an otherwise packed store, there was no “storm” of activity around the (rather iPhone-like appearing) Storm kiosk. The Storm itself looks alright, it’s not too heavy, and it feels good in the hand. In spite of pushing every external button on the device, however, and tapping the crap out of the screen, that little bugger of a phone would not go any further into its functions. I’m sure there’s some simple solution to this, but as no Verizon employee was willing to help me (too busy selling other phones, you see), I never figured it out. At one point, I took out my iPhone and, in a fit of instant juxtaposition, pushed the home button. A sense of relief soon overcame me that some one cares about the customer in the design process, and that the iPhone represents that commitment.
Best executive decision of the decade. Give Apple the ball and get out of the way. Remember the Bulls? Yeah, Scottie did a little bit.
Seriously, people were standing in line for this? I live in a puny, little, useless town in the middle of nowhere, but when AT&T;released both the iPhone and iPhone 3G, the lines were huge, the three major TV stations were out interviewing everyone.
I haven’t hear squat about the Storm.
I give RIM and Blackberry all due credit for creating a huge market in the Enterprise segment. Without the BlackBerry,exactly what would have Apple launched? Or would it have even launched anything?
But the iPhone is about two generations ahead of RIM. By the time RIM catches up to iPhone 3G 2.2, we’ll be at iPhone 4G 4.0. But many individuals have a BlackBerry crush, so I guess that will be good enough.
@John E
Sorry, but you are very wrong. iPhone have had issues, but did you read the reviews at the time it launched? Everyone loved it.
That’s the difference between Storm and iPhone:
If you love it you put up with those small issues.
If you hate it the ‘small’ issues are why you get your money back.
Been a longtime BB user here, and I just don’t see the value in the Storm over the Curve or Pearl units. Just seems rather gimmicky.
Clearly, a poorly-pushed response to the iPhone.
RIM is a good company that has made good products. I hope for their sake that they return to building on the strengths that made them the leader in U.S. smartphone sales. Blackberry customers are loyal to the products that are typical of RIMs peculiar take on the email-centric smartphone. A (apparently) badly done knockoff of a competitor’s product is not the path to success with those customers.
I saw the video on Mobileburn review. Full operation of the product on video. Its slow, clunky, thick as a brick. UI is slapped on it seems…. really bad.
I’m trying to remember what iPhone issues I had with the EDGE version. Can you tell me, specifically, JonE?
After seeing and using a Storm, and reading of the many issues that people are having, I can’t get to AT&T;and the iPhone fast enough. I’ll have some crow with a side of humble pie.
For example, the security lockdowns and remote wiping features don’t work if you can’t get the device connected to the corporate BES server.
Once again the “competition is good” maggots see,
marketers want you to belive that, but it simply isn’t true. Half-ass products resembling world-class products aren’t competition.
@John E — “nagging problems, including the click-to-type screen, will get fixed.”
Sorry. That will not happen. That’s what their interface is. There’s a click vs tap because that allows the Drizzle to have “hover”.
They would have to completely redesign and recode the interface from the ground up. What Apple designed 4 years ago…
“People may have lined up early this morning in eager anticipation of buying the Storm…”
Ha ha ha ha yeah, right. As for excusing BB’s turd of a phone because it’s v1.0, the iPhone worked very nicely the day I bought it (and yes, there was quite a line for that one).
@Macaday – ah, how memory fades. lemee see, iPhone 1.0: just web apps, no 3G, no Exchange, no GPS, no ring tones and other various such lacking UI details, various 1.0 bugs, security issues, and oh, it cost $200 more. (i bought one anyway a few months later when the price came down, version 1.2 i think by then.) it was a breakthrough product, but sales have tripled since the 3G 2.0 came out this year. so, case closed.
@thethirdshoe – well, we’ll see how RIM responds next year. i read also now the processor is underpowered, hence the sluggish performance. these hardware issues could be fixed by RIM in the next version. i would bet they will, because RIM clearly intends to try to keep up with the iPhone. so i would advise a Blackberry-loving friend not to buy the 2008 Storm and wait til next year instead.
@CD – great, i look forward to iPhone 3.0 next year too. but i am not going to replace my 2007 model until Steve J sees fit to give me a decent camera. maybe snapshots of friends aren’t important for you, but my wife loves them and i need to be able to focus the thing.