Blackberry Storm Review

The new Blackberry Storm 9500 is out and it aims to dethrone the king of smartphones – the iPhone. It also competes with the T Mobile G1 powered by Google’s Android. It offers many features similar to the iPhone and also tries to imitate its looks. The touchscreen, the large display all remind you of the iPhone. It doesn’t outdo the iPhone in terms of design but tries its best to do so when it comes to features. It is the best looking Blackberry to date and RIM (Research in Motion) is now trying to appeal to the younger hip generation while also retaining its primary user base – the office going crowd. It sports a lot of features and a new type of TouchScreen interface which offers feedback – SurePress. But it doesn’t have Wi-Fi which is a very disappointing drawback. The Storm runs on Verizon’s network which is supposedly better than AT&T’s network. In this review we check out the Blackberry Storm and see if it can manage to make a dent in the almighty iPhone’s market share.

Blackberry Storm Specs:

• Dimensions: 112.5 x 62.2 x 14 mm
• Weight: 155 gms
• Display: Touchscreen, 65K colors, 360 x 480 pixels, 3.25 inches
• Memory: 1 GB internal memory + 4 GB MicroSD, expandable upto 8 GB MicroSD
• RAM: 128 MB RAM
• CPU: 524 MHz CPU
• Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• OS: Blackberry OS ver 4.7
• Camera: 3.15 MP camera – 2048 × 1536 pixels with autofocus, flash,
• GPS: GPS with A-GPS, Blackberry Maps
• Applications: Blackberry Application Centre (Not Launched Yet)

Design:

The Blackberry Storm 9500 has a nice and stylish design. It tries to go the iPhone way with the touchscreen covering a major surface area on the body with as less buttons as possible. At dimensions of 112.5 x 62.2 x 14 mm, the Blackberry Storm 9500 is nice and compact according to smartphone standards and weighs about 155 gms. While it is a bit bulky compared to the iPhone, it is normal considering smartphone sizes and its feature list.

The build quality is superb and at first look you know that its creators have spent a lot of time and energy in designing it. The Storm’s body is composed mainly of brushed aluminium and plastic and feels very sturdy and durable. While it is bulkier than the iPhone, it sports a smaller 3.25 inch display compared to the iPhone’s 3.5 inch display.

The front of the phone sports the huge 3.25 inch display and four keys below it – Call, Menu, Back and End keys. All four of them are adequately sized. Above the display you find the lock and mute key which blend in with the design. The left side sports the MicroUSB port and the voice dial button. On the right, you will find the 3.5 mm standard headphone jack to connect external headphones, volume controls and the camera key.

Display and UI:

The Blackberry Storm sports a 3.25 inch, 65K color TFT touchscreen display with a native resolution of 360 x 480 pixels. It is a bit smaller compared to the mammoth screen of the iPhone but is definitely among the bigger screen you will find. The wider resolution is nice for watching movies in the portrait mode. The Storm’s display has decent brightness and contrast levels. It also has nice sunlight legibility. It also has optimum pixel density and the images look more detailed. The Touchscreen display is very nice and offers a new feature – SurePress. The virtual keys and icons light up just when you are about to press them. You can feel feedback whenever you click the Touchscreen. This is very helpful during navigation but hinders fast typing on the QWERTY keypad.

The user interface is very intuitive and user friendly. The menu transitions and visual effects all add to the appeal of the UI. The UI auto rotates and changes its alignment whenever you tilt it, thanks to the accelerometer. The interface does feel a bit sluggish at times but that can easily be corrected through a software update. You can type using a virtual QWERTY keypad but the typing speed would be a bit slow, the SurePress feature works great otherwise. The spell suggest feature doesn’t work as well as the iPhone’s word suggestion feature.

OS:

The Blackberry Storm 9500 runs on Blackberry OS v4.7 which is the latest yet. It is the best at email, after all it is a Blackberry and also sports a nice web browser. The web browser renders pages fast and correctly but doesn’t quite match up to the high standards set by the iPhone’s Safari browser. The internet speeds are better than the iPhone on a AT&T network, thanks to Verizon. It also comes with an IM application using which you can connect to your GMail, Yahoo, MSN, AIM accounts.

There are not many apps out yet for the new OS v4.7 powering the Storm, but you can expect the ball to set rolling by Jan next year. RIM is going to launch a Application Center soon, like the iPhone App Store. By then 3rd party applications should be available in plenty. It comes with 1 GB internal memory and supports upto 16 GB MicroSDs. It is powered by a 524 MHz Qualcomm chip.

Multimedia:

The Blackberry Storm has nice sound quality and comes with loud speakers. it is quite able on the multimedia front and offers nice video playback quality too. It can sync with iTunes and you can also download music online. The Storm supports a whole lot of formats – MP3MPEG-4, H.264, WMV, much more than the iPhone, but the iPhone’s brilliant display outdoes the Storm’s when it comes to video playback.

The Storm comes with a 3.2 MP cam which takes shots at a resolution of 2048 × 1536 pixels. The image quality is quite nice, much better than the iPhone’s 2 MP can manage. It also has autofocus and flash. It also records video with decent quality. It also supports Geotagging to link your images to geographical co ordinates.

Battery Life and Other Stuff:

The Storm has a reasonably powerful battery and can easily l;ast for about 2 days with moderate usage. It comes with a GPS receiver with A-GPS support. The GPS works quite well and is quite accurate. It comes bundled with Blackberry maps but you can also use the Google Maps application with it. The call reception quality on the Storm is quite nice.

Pros:

• Touchscreen with SurePress
• Nice Multimedia Capabilities

Cons:

• No Wi-Fi
• Sluggish Interface

Final Words:

The Storm is a nice phone and offers a decent alternative to the iPhone and the G1. It does have some loose ends but most of them can easily be tied up with a software update. It is one of the best Blackberry’s yet.

Our Rating: 3.5 / 5.