February 12, 2009

• It's been a few days now since I got my new phone, the BlackBerry Storm, and I've got to say that I'm pleased with my purchase. I've spent a lot of time these few days personalizing everything about the Storm, from the icon setups, putting photos, videos, music, and just overall learning how to use the phone properly, that I've been going through a full charged battery in less than a day (aprox 15 hours). My previous phones lacked in some features that I'm very pleased to take advantage of in this phone, primarily the full HTML web browser and the ability to finally properly use traditional mp3s for my ringtones without having to go through several steps and hassles. It also looks like I'm going to finally synch up my e-mail to my blackberry as well, so I can really really take advantage of what my phone can do. I'm happy to say that overall, my initial positive reactions made over two months ago still stands, although my few complaints are also still present. It's very debatable as to whether it is better than the iPhone, because there is a lot that phone has done correctly and more user friendly than the Storm. There are however some things that this BlackBerry has also done right over Apple, like MMS, video recording, swappable battery, and expandable memory (microSD).

  Despite several people's seeming reluctance to properly learn it, I find that the clickable touch screen is something I really like. I appreciate the fact that I don't have to worry too much about accidentally activating something when I am simply just hovering over an item. On the otherhand, accidentally clicking on a link or letter next to what you wanted to activate still does happen on occasion. The QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode works well, although it'll never completely be better than a real dedicated keyboard. I also deactivated the "sure type" keyboard (never been a fan of that) on portrait mode to a traditional but much preffered T9 setup. The scrolling, navigating, and sliding motions of the screen works well, although I admit that it feels "smoother" on the iPhone. My main complaint still stands, which is the fact that the accellorometer can be a little wonky at times when trying to figure out your orientation, and I've had to be patient as long as five seconds to get it right at times (still not broken though). BTW, the speaker is top notch, nice and loud for a cellphone.

  The apps store is unfortunately non-existent since it's still a planned future release, so I've had to download apps by just using the built in web browser to sites like crackberry.com where I did find some pretty useful free stuff. Just off the top of my head, some of the applications I have are "TalkLock," "Berry Torch," "Google Maps," "GeoTipApp," "BBTran Translator," "AP Mobile News," "Weatherbug," "Slacker Radio," "YouTube," "Viigo," and "Facebook." It also has a slew of instant messaging options, although I haven't tried any of that yet. At this point I still haven't even try downloading any additional games for the Storm, but that's something I plan to do in the next few days.

  I'm still a little annoyed at the wanton complaints I keep hearing about the BlackBerry Storm, because while the phone is not perfect, it's definitely not this "failed experiment" that some people claim it to be. A lot of people's problems usually stem from simply just not learning the touch screen short cuts, or their inability to adapt to a different touch screen phone that isn't the iPhone. Oh well, while they continue to stay disappointed with it, I'm going to continue being happy with it.

  below is a photo taken by the Storm's camera (resized to 640x480)
  

  • 1:15 pm
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