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We’re at my parents’ house for a couple of days to celebrate Thanksgiving Day, and one of the first things I had to do upon arrival is to inspect Dad’s new Blackberry Storm.
Some initial thoughts…
- It’s obviously a “me too” follow-up to the iPhone, but overall it seems like RIM did it pretty well.
- I use Opera Mini on my 8830, and the browser on the Storm is way better than Opera Mini. It’s still pretty far behind the awesomeness that is Safari on the iPhone, but it’s very usable for those sites (like mine) that don’t do a good job of detecting mobile browsers.
- The screen click thing is weird. I started to get used to it a little bit, but I kept having to remind myself that I had to push the screen to get it to type/click.
- The keyboard would take some getting used to, but I think I could adapt. The iPhone keyboard might be a little easier for beginners, but over time, the differences would probably be minor. Typing in landscape mode (1 letter per key) was actually harder for me than typing in portrait mode (with 2 letters per button). The Storm does a good job of figuring out what words you are typing, and I made fewer “wrong button” mistakes with it in portrait mode.
- They did a good job keeping it pretty Blackberry-ish, so people who migrate to it from another Blackberry should find things pretty easily. I picked it up and was navigating the menus and finding the options pretty quickly.
- I didn’t use the phone function, but Dad says he likes it. He doesn’t hear too well sometimes, so if he says it’s good and clear, it probably is.
I’ll tinker with it more while I’m here, but my initial thought was that it seems like a pretty good phone.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I used Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition plugin on my site. That helped with BlackBerry rendering a lot. It didn’t work flawlessly in that every once in a while it seemed to miss the agent tag and render in full mode. But most of the time it was fine, and made browsing the site with the Berry easier and faster.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-edition/
So you have to push on the screen hard enough to make it click? That seems a bit difficult.
I’ve been eying the Storm, but I”m not eligible for the “good” Verizon discount until February.
i actually considered trying to track down an “unlocked” one to use on T-Mobile but have looked into it much. it does seem like a pretty nice phone.
i’ve been on the T-Mobile Sidekick since they released the SK 1 Color. they’ve finally come a LONG way by adding pop3 email, video & image messaging capabilities to the newer SK-LX. but what REALLY keeps me with the SK is the cheap price of T-Mobiles Data plan.
i pay $75 a month & i get 2000 anytime mins, free mobile to mobile, unlimited txt & unlimited internet. plus i have the “Fav 5″ thing so i never pay to talk to any of my top 5 most called. unless Verizon offers better than that i guess i’ll have to stick with T-Mobile when my contract is up for renewal.
(p.s.- i hear that Sprint will be picking up the Storm after the 1st of the year but, i’ll NEVER go to Sprint/Nextel.)
Sprint isn’t as bad as Bellsouth (AT&T), but they’re close.
Have you had issues with signal strength around here with T-Mobile. Seems like I heard that was an issue. Or maybe it was while roaming.