We got to grips with the BlackBerry Storm in exclusive hands on pictures yesterday, but how did it compare to all those touchscreen smartphones out there? Is it an iPhone iKiller? An Android annihilator? First impressions inside.
There’s good news and bad news for potential new CrackBerry addicts. Negatives first: the finger operated BlackBerry OS is more patchy than a ragdoll. Putting it through its perfectly normal paces (Scrolling down the menu screen, booting up the media player), it crashed twice to the extent that a Vodafone rep on hand had to take the battery out and put it back again – in the process showing us just how long it takes to load when starting up also.
RIM says it’s not the final code before release, but that’s a lot to fix between now and er, now when it comes out. What looks even less likely though that they’ll fix are the shocking internet speeds. It took several long minutes to log on to electricpig.co.uk, leaving us wondering about the strength of Vodafone’s HSDPA signal in the centre of the capital. Vodafone also assured us by pointing out we were in a bus at the time – but stationary buses aren’t made of concrete.
Now for the good news: that clickable touchscreen RIM has been touting really is a breakthrough for smartphones as much as multitouch is in the iPhone. The pressure you need to put on it is just right (What we like to call the Goldilocks porridge spot) and it’s extremely assuring to always feel what you’ve just typed, especially for fat fingered folk. You’ll never get the typing speed of a traditional BlackBerry handset, but this is the fastest you’ll ever manage on a touchscreen. And while the resolution can’t match that of a HTC Touch HD, movie watching is still a treat on it.
When sites do load, browsing a web page is fast, and just as pretty as Safari on the iPhone, but with added bells on. It seems obvious, but traditional cut and paste is utterly intuitive here, letting you take a garbled URL off an email and slap it in the address bar instantly.
Overall? If you’re already hooked on BlackBerry but fancy a ‘fone that will handle your media better, this might be worth a punt. But we really felt the omission of WiFi – at the moment the iPhone 3G is still the top choice. But these are only first impressions: with any luck, we’ll be getting a review handset in next week for some touching up, so stay tuned to see if RIM does fix the problems in time.
Out Friday | Free from £35 per month | Vodafone
