November seems to have been firmware upgrade month for all the big tech companies. First Microsoft gives Xbox 360 owners the NXE overhaul, iPhones get an update and now PS3 owners get to run flash video on their tellies.
While the BlackBerry Storm has only been out for a few weeks, it could do with a few fixes too: here are the five things we’d like to see in the next Storm firmware upgrade. Vote for the one you’d most like to see most in our poll below, and if there’s any we’ve missed, let us know in the comments.
Stability
There’s no denying that while the Storm’s touchscreen 4.7 OS looks ever so nice, it certainly needs a few tweaks. Indeed, it died completely, twice, the first time we played with it. These generic bugs are the sort of thing that should have been ironed out already, so let’s hope RIM moves fast on this one.
BlackBerry OS 4.5 and 4.6 support
Just because the Storm lacks a trackball doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t run the thousands of apps available for the traditional BlackBerry OS. You can’t at the moment, but it could easily be done: if the apps run at the old BlackBerry standard 320×240 resolution, that would leave half the Storm’s display to fill in as the keyboard.
Fix the accelerometer’s speed
Tilting from landscape to portrait mode and back again is not exactly seamless on the Storm. It’s positively irritating in fact. The review sample we’ve been using is erratic at best. Sometimes it won’t rotate, other times it flips around with barely a nudge. Its animation doesn’t run smoothly either, with the landscape screen re-drawing itself over the portrait one underneath. If RIM wants users to make the most of the Storm’s screen flipping function, it needs to sort out the sensitivity and slickness, sharpish.
More multi-touch!
The Storm uses multi-touch for cutting and copying text, and it works like a dream, but when it comes to using two fingers in the browser and other apps it’s a no-no. We can’t think why RIM has neglected it, especially when it’s such a natural way to zoom in and out of web pages or maps. Hopefuly it can be added with a simple firmware fix.
iPlayer support
While Vodafone’s 3G network remains patchy, the chances of streaming iPlayer coming to the Storm are next to none without Wi-Fi inside, but there’s another way around it. A bit of boardroom bargaining with the Beeb and a firmware upgrade could add the Storm to the list of players compatible with iPlayer mobile downloads, no probs. It would also give the Storm a feather in its cap that no other handset could match, although given that the UK’s not BlackBerry’s biggest market, this may be wishful thinking.
