Research in Motion has a new phone that’s “officially called the BlackBerry Storm,” David Pogue reports for The New York Times. “But I’ve got a better name for it: the BlackBerry Dud.”
The Storm’s “entire screen acts like a mouse button. Press hard enough, and it actually responds with a little plastic click… As a result, the Storm offers two degrees of touchiness. You can tap the screen lightly, or you can press firmly to register the palpable click,” Pogue reports. “It’s not a bad idea. In fact, it ought to make the on-screen keyboard feel more like actual keys… Unfortunately, RIM has completely botched the execution.”
“The Storm even muffs simple navigation tasks. When you open a menu, the commands are too close together; even if your finger seems to be squarely on the proper item, your click often winds up triggering something else in the list,” Pogue reports. “There’s no momentum to the scrolling, either, as on the iPhone… In short, trying to navigate this thing isn’t just an exercise in frustration — it’s a marathon of frustration.”
“Now, I wouldn’t come down this hard on some product — especially one that was so eagerly anticipated, customers lined up at dawn on the day of its release — without getting a second, third and fourth opinion. And I’m telling you, there wasn’t a soul who tried this machine who wasn’t appalled, baffled or both,” Pogue reports. “And that’s before they discovered that the Storm doesn’t have Wi-Fi.”
Pogue asks, “How did this thing ever reach the market? Didn’t anyone at RIM actually try it? Or was everyone involved just too terrified to pull the emergency brake on this train?”
There’s much more – highly recommended – in the full report of the train wreck, er… review of RIM’s BlackBerry Storm, headlined “Blackberry Storm Downgraded To A Depression,” here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Vista got better reviews.
@ping,
Yeah, like who would ever want an expert in Constitutional law running the country?
After 8 long years of Cheney-Bush doing their best to turn the Constitution into a piece of used toilet paper, it feels great to have grown-ups back in charge.
This guy is obviously one of Apples “pet” reporters. He got an iPhone 3G before it’s release and now he’s bashing Apple’s competitors.
This is just Apple FUD.
as i often say “there is no competition” for the schmucks who say “competition is good” without understanding the true intrinsic nature of what it takes to be a competitor. Nikon and Canon are real competitors, and Nikon mopped the floor with Canon’s ass this time. I have the D700 – fscking amazing!! Why? Nikon had a coup and got rid of old, outdated management execs. They bought in more progressive people, and now have THE best camera in it’s class. Meanwhile, Canon recently had a 1DsmarkIII, a $8000 camera, with autofocus issues. What? How the hell did that happen? Maybe resting on their laurels? The point is, regardless the technology, companies must embrace forward thinking, and Quality Control. Blackberry has made a derivative product, that cant even copy the winner correctly. People at Blackberry AND Verizon need to be fired over this debacle, the investors MUST see to it.
I didn’t notice anyone get fired over the MobileMe disaster. A product that needs some tweaking is one thing (what DOESN’T need a update or two in this day). Failure to provide a service as advertised or worse yet actual losing email and then saying there is no backup is pretty much as bad as it gets.
I guess Apple / at&t;have some fired people too with all the dropped calls, reboots, lockups prior to the number of updates iPhone has had.
Wow! I know die hard RIM lovers who have been looking forward to the “Storm”. I laugh as I walk away with my iPhone.
“The funny thing about this is the absolutely fawning review of the Storm by that bastion of intellectual honesty, Gary Krackow of TheStreet.com. I think he’s the only person who likes the thing.”
You should this review at the Sci-Fi channel DVICE site… another bastion of PC weinies.
http://dvice.com/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.php
As a life long SF fan, I’ve always taken a bit of pride (falsely, I guess) in the notion that SF people were more open minded and receptive of new things. I am embarrassed by the narrow mindedness (and general anti-Apple/Mac stance) of reviewers and fans of a site oriented towards the SF community.
Of course this is a channel (one whose founders was the SF giant, the late Isaac Asimov) whose operators decided to cancel a number of original hit SF series and dropped some SF programming in favor of wrestling… so what should I expect?
…and yet after so much negative publicity most of which is conveniently summarized by MDN, Verizon order page now shows Storm device delivery 12/15 instead of 12/8 just day or two ago.
Sad, really sad having people willing to wait so long before they can have Storm blackberry experience first-hand.