The new Blackberry Storm
After many years of using a regular cell phone and adding a cellular modem about 18 months ago for my laptop, I decided recently to simplify my travelling gear a little and upgrade to a smartphone that could cover mobile web and e-mail while also doing double duty as a cellular modem for the lappy.
My wife and I decided recently to get our 12 year old daughter a cell phone (I travel and work away from home for months at a time), so I began looking at how to simplify our cell plan, get a phone for our daughter, and if possible reduce our monthly expenditure.
When it comes to smartphones that could fill my basic requirements (mobile email, mobile web, and cell modem duty) there are a few choices. I have been very pleased with Verizon over the years and decided to check out their selection.
In my review, I considered the Palm Centro, the new Samsung Omnia and the new Blackberry Storm.
After a quick review I found the Centro basically had the functionality I desired but I found the screen and keyboard to be a bit smallish.
Next I looked at the Samsung Omnia and was really impressed. If you are a Windows purist this is the device for you. It comes preloaded with Office Mobile and is a real powerhouse in terms of capability. There are a couple reasons I did not go with it, first is the screen size is small compared to the Storm, the second is the keyboard while normal Blackberry size, seemed small to me, and lastly, the setup and management seemed to favor the geeky side, and while I love tech I was concerned about my ability to set it up, synch it, and just manage the technology.
And that left the Blackberry Storm. OK, so here are my thoughts after about a day.
The screen is beautiful, fantastic, truly gorgeous. There are not enough adjectives to praise it enough, it is the best feature of the phone. Backlight brightness is of course adjustable, and I have it set to dim to just 10% when not active. Color and image quality is amazing.
The user interface took a little getting used to, the touch screen is one that requires skin contact, a stylus will not work. The screen highlights the subject you are hovering over so you can be sure you are on what you want before ‘clicking’ it – with a little practice I am used to it but it was frustrating for about the first hour or two while I adjusted my typing speed to ensure I could see the highlight and know I was going to get what I expected.
One neat feature of the full size touchscreen is there is an internal accelerometer that detects how the unit is oriented and if you hold it sideways (either direction) it switches to a landscape mode which offers a full QWERTY keyboard. In portrait mode you get a standard phone pad keyboard and can choose between multi-tap or what they call ‘true-type’ which tries to guess what word you are typing. I prefer the multi-tap in portrait but find that I only use the landscape mode with the full keyboard.
The Blackberry browser is not quite IE but is definitely functional, it will navigate to most of my favorites but it looks like chat feature (like here on B-Prime) is not readily available. It keeps a favorite list, and a good history. Some sites render in very small font, in order to zoom in you just click on an area of the screen with no active text – this is surprisingly intuitive.
Because it is a Blackberry of course, standard IM platforms are preloaded (Windows Live, Yahoo, Google, AIM and Blackberry Messenger) and they function extremely well. The keyboard works well for that in either mode (portrait or landscape).
The phone works fine as handset, speaker or handsfree with bluetooth. Sound quality is good in all uses.
Available applications are decent, it is preloaded with MSWord, MSExcel and MSPowerPoint viewers, the ‘premium’ software to create/manipulate those files is extra but is not believed to be highly priced (~$20-30). I am not sure yet if I will invest in that only because the keyboard makes me slow compared to using the lappy. That said, it would be great to be able to keep a generic project response template in the Storm and fill it in with key data and reply immediately for Guru.com project notifications and the like. I am still noodling on this.
The data modem function works great. Seems slightly faster than the old cell modem I had (18 months old). When functioning as a modem incoming calls go straight to voicemail, when browsing using the phone itself, you can choose to interrupt the session and answer the call, or ignore the call – pretty cool.
E-mail setup was a snap, I set it up to check my aol, yahoo and business POP accounts, only took about a minute each. The Blackberry email application learns your incoming email pattern and will adjust its’ timing for checking your various email servers based on that. In other words, the more emails you get, the more often it checks.
I am not sure about the VZ Navigator function – it seems cool, for finding cheap gas, etc., but I am not sure I am willing to spend an extra $10/mo for it. I am trying it out for a month free. I might be able to get much of the same functionality via the Yahoo maps function. The GPS function is neat, I am just not sure it is neat enough to pay for if yahoo maps will do what I need.
I installed the Blackberry desktop software, it lets me sync contacts, calendar and media files – it works very well and asks for confirmation before changing settings on either the Blackberry device or the lappy – I like that.
The Storm can function as a Napster to Go or i-Tunes device and is apparently, the only Verizon smartphone that can function with all i-tunes media for those who want to watch movies on the beautiful little screen.
I bought this device to allow me access to my personal and personal business e-mails without having to keep a window open on my machine at work – I don’t know what kind of internet cops they have but I figured it would be good to just not do that – add the browser ability to keep up with my favorite sites and it is a no-brainer.
This completes the ‘tools’ aspects of getting my ‘chit’ together, now it is up to me to put the grey matter behind my intent. Desire is to be able to respond quickly to e-mail requests for proposals, answer client questions right away for my own consulting practice.
Battery life seems very good so far but it requires a complete charge to last a long time.
All in all, I am very pleased. Full up monthly cost for 3 lines, basic shared family plan, and unlimited broadband access for the Blackberry is $159/mo, about the same as before only now our daughter gets a phone too. Our plan is to use the cell as a carrot/stick for her – not giving her texting right away but might add it later.
I was very impressed with the product knowledge of the young man who helped me at the local Verizon store. I spoke with him for about 30 minutes over the phone at first, describing my objectives, he was quick with recommendations and had an answer at hand for every question (smart or dumb), then he gave me a quick rundown and demo on the capabilities of the Omnia and the Storm.
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