BlackBerry Storm Review

Important Features

In spite of its touch screen the Storm is a real BlackBerry in every other way, including the corporate and push email, an adequate web browser, and built-in GPS.

Since BlackBerrys are geared toward corporate users, it is not surprising that email is more fully functional than on many other cell phones.  For instance, you can touch and hold one email and the Storm will show you all the messages in the thread.

Several of the functions that the iPhone lacks are front and center in the Storm. It has cut and paste. It has MMS for sending photos directly to other phones. It has excellent and convenient voice dialing. It comes with the software necessary to both view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

The Storm is rated for 5.5 hours of talk time. In our tests, battery life on the Storm is slightly better than the iPhone and much better than the G1, allowing us to use it for a full day without running out of power. Another nice feature is that the Storm has a user-replaceable battery.

The excellent Verizon cell phone system combined with the Storm’s hardware produced calls that were crisp, clear, and loud. The speaker phone also had excellent quality. And you can also perform voice recording on the Storm. Surprisingly, the Storm can even be used in Europe and some other areas where most Verizon phones don’t work.

The Storm includes a 3.2 megapixel camera that has zoom, flash and stabilizer and can also record video. Using the camera was intuitive and the convenience button on the side of the Storm made the camera easy to access. Pictures and videos were a good quality…better than many other cell phones. The only caveat was that when using the flash, the autofocus took several seconds to adjust. So you won’t be grabbing any high action shots.

The Storm’s media player doesn’t compare to the iPhone’s, but worked well enough for everyday listening and music playing.

We found Internet browsing on the Storm to be better than on older BlackBerrys, but not as fast or as smooth as browsing on the Apple’s Mobile Safari or the G1’s Chrome light. Although we have never been big fans of the Verizon Navigator software, The GPS will get you where you want to go.

One great feature of the Storm is that it has expandable memory and it comes with an 8GB microSD card. So you get the capacity to store all of your music, picture, videos, and documents without additional cost.

The Storm also comes with Setup Wizards & online tutorials to guide you through set up and use. In fact the BlackBerry online community is one of the best and you can easily find help if you need it.

There are plenty of BlackBerry applications that will run on the Storm, but not all take full advantage of the new touch screen. As of the writing of this review, the BlackBerry App World application store has just opened. A superficial look shows, not surprisingly, a focus on business applications with not nearly as many free and/or fun applications as the Apple apps store or even the G1’s apps store. It will take a while for BlackBerry to catch up to the others with additional applications.

The Storm lacks the WiFi capacities that are included in the iPhone and the G1. While not a total necessity, it’s nice to be able to fall back on Wi-Fi when it is available, so many will find this a drawback.