Review of the storm soon

Here it is folks the Blackberry Storm. Now if the phone looks like 2 phones that you have seen in the past(ie: iphone and Lg Dare) thats because it does. In fact this phone was the offspring of the two phones getting together one long night after a hard day of work. Ok maybe not but you get my point. The Storm reminds me of the two phones mixed together in so many ways. But the feature that stands out as a hybrid is the button screen that presses down to simulate a press of the button but to me it reminds me of a press of a mouse but more than a keypad button. But regardless of how you look at this idea, in my eyes it just works. I really like the feel of this phone. Its not too heavy but no at the same time it's not at all light. I would say it has a good weight on it. The kind that lets you know it's there when you need it:). But even though the weight is good in your hands it is not the weight that I feel will survive a fall if not protected. Hence my clear fitted case for the phone. Now this phone is a beautiful phone in or out of anyone's case, especially when looking into the screen which is about 480x360 resolution. Now when you first get the phone the screen brightness is set to 100%. No need for that high of brightness. You can take it all the way down to 40% and still have an amazing looking picture. In fact it will extend the already awesome battery life. And while on the subject of batteries, which this one is removable, Blackberry for some reason just knows how to work battery power. I don't know if the other companies need to take lessons from blackberry or they just plain don't care. But I am sick of hearing
excuse from all the other big name companies out there that claim their battery life is bad only because there phone is 3g. Thats a lie! My curve is 3g, my storm is 3g, the blackberry bold is 3g and they kill in battery life. So note to all other companies-you guys had better get it together because blackberry is showing that it can be done.

Now moving on to the Storms Web. Its very good, but not as good a the Iphones. I will give it the 2nd place award though because no other phone out there comes as close as blackberry did to apples web experience. But I will the say that the joker under the sleeve will be that speed of the pages. This area the storm beat the Iphone 3g . In fact most cities around the world will have better speeds and overall quality of the Internet on Verizon's network that ATT . So this maybe also based on location.

Call quality is as good as any other Verizon phone I have used. I due love blackberries interface when making calls. It gives you just the right amount of icons and info to make the call information if ever needed to be right there on the screen no option menus to have to pull up . Even your contacts can be reached on the same screen.

The email, if possible, was in my opinion done just a little bit better than all previous blackberries. For some reason the interface looked a lot cleaner and more presentable on this phone. I don't know if its the screen graphics or layout of the phone menus and design but it just really feels that maybe that updated the layout a bit for email, as if they really needed to.

And that takes me to the Media portion. And right off I want to tell you that the speaker on the thing is one of the loudest speakers I have ever had on a mobile phone. Rim really put some hard work into the media sides of things for that phone. The sound options were good ( with the choice of different sound presets if you wanted), the sound quality was excellent at least while I was using my Westone 2's . And the graphics from the movies will blow you away. Frankly outside of being connected to the itunes store there is little apple has if anything over the blackberry storm when it comes down to the sound of playback or quality of movies. And when you add this 3.2 mega picture camera and video capability then you really have a superior product as far as the media options go.

**Another thing of note, which may not be big to others but is for me, was the ability to custom your background with this phone. This was always my biggest problem with the iphone, the wallpaper could be changed( I'm not talking about the lock screen). And all you had day end and day out was a screen with nothing but a bunch of icons all over the place. This is something blackberry storm fans don't have to worry about. **


Overall, Is it better than the iphone as a stand alone product with no ties to any phone company? In some ways yes and other no, but mostly it doesn't over take the iphone as the best cellphone product but when you add all other issues with it (cost of contract, paying for mobile me( thats a joke), and the minutes they give you then you clearly see a better package of a product come into the picture. My ranking 4.65 out of 5 stars.

11/23/08: NEW INFO

***A note to all storm buyers; there seems to be a batch of them that at one point or another either lock up , lag, or have slow downs in movements and rotation. Phonedog's Noah reviewed the Storm and in the beginning these things weren't really a problem to him until a couple of days later they showed up . On the net most believe this to be something RIM will correct on the next Firmware update(Monday the 24th is what most believe) they push out. I personally got lag issues and slow down in the beginning but after a call to Verizon and them removing my account from the data access and restoring it and me having to remove my battery the problems went away. Will it return, who knows but if everyone is correct about this being a firmware issue then it most likely will happen again. So my suggestion is that all wait until a confirmation is given on where this problem came from and if it will be stopped by the firmware update.