Blackberry Storm

Jay takes a look at the Blackberry Storm...was it worth the wait?

Hi! I'm Jay Goldman and you're watching Mr. Mobile. On today’s show we’re going to take a look at The Blackberry Storm. One of the latest devices that come from RIM and they're first touch screen device. A little bit of story behind this, apparently Apple originally picks the iPhone to Verizon being one of the larger networks in the US and Verizon turned them down so they went to AT&T. A little mistake for Verizon as it turns out everyone knows the iPhone is very popular and so Verizon apparently went back to RIM and said to them “Hey, we really want a touch screen device that’s going to compete with the iPhone. What can you do for us and this is the result.” Give it a little bit of the size comparison, just so you got a sense of how big the device is. This is a black, an iPhone 3G compared to the Storm so you can see about the same size. You can see roughly the same height, box kind of similar to each other. The build is a little bit different on the Storm. It's got a bit of a rubberize grip on it. It makes it really nice to hold. Overall it's a really pretty looking device. The only build quality issue that I notice with it at all is that sometimes you get a little bit of light leaking from around the touch screen. It doesn’t look all that professional but otherwise, it's got a nice weight to it, very comfortable to hold in the hand. If you're more of a traditional Blackberry user there’s a comparison to an 8800 so they give you a sense of the size. Again a little bit thicker, not a whole lot, it fits in your pocket quite happily. Both the iPhone and the storm have a capacitive touch screens on them which makes them very reactive to when you're touching the screen which is really nice. The difference with the Storm over the iPhone is that this actually clicks when you're touching it so you might actually be able to hear that even. Very slight, but the difference really is that you can hover over things on the Storm whereas on the iPhone as you know you can only tap on them. So if we take a look on the screen for example I can actually hover and that selects an item before I click to actually go into for example the browser. That’s really nice in some places. It's great to have that extra level of interaction with the device. Unfortunately, for typing it actually makes it quite slow because you don’t have to click every time you want to press a letter. There's a bit of reaction time as the mechanism pops back out and that slows down typing on the device quite a lot. I also found that because you can't see the letter underneath your finger even though it does actually glow before you press it it's actually a little bit more difficult to press the right letter than it is on iPhone where the letter pops up above so you can see it around your hand. Overall impression with the device, it's really pretty to look at. It's running the latest Blackberry OS same thing that you find on the Bold or on the new Javelin which is really nice to look at but the Storm needs more of an interface that’s built around touch and the Blackberry OS is really optimized for people who are using a keyboard in the Blackberry menu or track ball. So I think what we’ll hopefully see in the next revision is a lot more touch aware interface in the OS. Right now it's lagging a little bit behind. The iPhone is a definitely a more seamless experience if you do a lot of interaction with the screen. Bottom line for my opinion it's a really nice device. It's not quite ready for prime time. I think if you're somebody who does a lot of email and typing on your phone, you probably want a Blackberry, the new Javelin is really nice. I would recommend that or a Bold. If you're somebody who wants and who do things beyond just email and typing on your phone maybe do a lot of web browsing, you want to play games, install apps, you watch a lot of movies the iPhone is definitely the right choice for you. Storm is really interesting to watch. You see how it comes out in the next revision of it, until them I’ll hold off. This has been Mr. Mobile, I'm Jay Goldman. Thanks for watching check out Butterscotch.com for more shows.