Features
The Storm is a classic BlackBerry device in that it supports all the usual mobile email standards. It works with BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino and Novell GroupWise, and will also pick up POP email via the BlackBerry Internet Service.
You get 1GB of on-board memory plus 128MB of Flash. Storage can be expanded with microSD cards and our review unit came with a 1GB card. The microSD card slot is under the battery cover, but at least you can swap cards without removing the battery.
The Storm is a quad-band GSM phone with GPRS/EDGE and 3G/HSDPA support. There's no front-facing camera for two–way video calling but the Storm does have a 3.2-megapixel camera at the back. This shoots video as well as stills, the former at 176-by-144 and 320-by-240 pixels.
The camera has an LED flash and autofocus; if you touch the on-screen shoot button a small window appears, which is the area on which the autofocus system concentrates. If you press too hard your photo will be taken without the autofocus option. We found the camera a bit slow to shoot, making it all too easy to take blurred photos.
The Storm has an integrated GPS receiver, which you can use to geotag your photographs. You also get BlackBerry Maps, Google Maps and Vodafone Find Go.
Bluetooth is integrated, but Wi-Fi is notably missing from the spec sheet. Wireless networking is a standard feature for handheld-format smartphones these days, and its absence here is both surprising and disappointing.
The user interface is essentially what we first saw in the BlackBerry Bold, with some enhancements to take advantage of the touch-screen.
The main screen offers two rows of four icons at the foot of the display that access various commonly used applications. Tap the area above these icons and you get a fuller 4x4 grid of icons. You sweep your finger up and down to scroll though all available icons, tapping the one you want to launch the relevant program.
A similar sweeping system works within menus (which are called up by hitting the BlackBerry Menu key beneath the screen): if there are more menu options than the display can show, a sweep will bring up the remainder. Irritatingly the 'Close' option for an application is at the bottom of the list so you often have to sweep down to get to it. Similarly, the 'Switch applications' option is the penultimate one. In many applications there's often also a row of tappable options along the bottom of the touch-screen.
If you choose the clock (an analogue display that occupies the entire screen) and then call up the menu, you can set an alarm and enter a rather useful 'bedside mode'. This leaves the clock running but stops the phone from issuing any alerts, except for any alarms you may have set.
Like a number of touch-screen handhelds, the Storm has an accelerometer that flips the screen into landscape format as you turn the device in your hand. On our review sample this didn't seem particularly well calibrated: it seemed to flip into widescreen mode at any opportunity, but was reluctant to flip back into portrait mode. We were assured that we had a final sample of the device, so this is a concern.
Text input is via an on-screen keyboard. Start creating an email or SMS message and if the screen is in portrait format, you get a SureType-style keyboard with (mostly) two letters per on-screen key. Switch to landscape mode and the keyboard changes into a QWERTY unit. We couldn't find a way to force SureType in landscape mode, which could annoy fans of that system.
Performance & battery life
We had no problems with call quality and battery life was a highlight. In our non-stop music playback test, the Storm delivered 14.75 hours of music from a full battery charge, which is impressive for any handheld device. In everyday use we had no trouble getting through a couple of days between charges.
Conclusion
When we first got hold of it, we really wanted to like the BlackBerry Storm. It looks smart, and the innovative SurePress system sounds great on paper. But having lived with the device for two weeks, we're not convinced that SurePress is as good as it could be. We also have some concerns about the engineering of the device, while the lack of Wi-Fi may be a deal-breaker for a significant number of users.
8%
1%
it is a awesome piece, my girlfriend use a smartphone, anything i sent to her, from any things, i got a chance to look, it received beautifully. other features i yet to play.
The good: very sweal piece, like a small pc, just powerful, it is indeed a smartphone.
The bad: slightly large heavy. relative to even normal simple piece.