National treasure and smartphone enthusiast Stephen Fry has given his opinion on the BlackBerry Storm – and it’s not the positive reaction Vodafone and RIM would have been hoping for.

Via Twitter (natch), Fry released a series of messages dissing RIM’s touchscreen smartie: “Been playing with the BB Storm. Shockingly bad. I mean embarrassingly awful. Such a disappointment. Rushed out unfinished. What a pity.”

“Yes, I blame n’works more than RIM. Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t’screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it.”

“Plus the GPS maps won’t work – issue with BIS connections. I see from forums postings this is widespread in the UK. iPhone killer? Ha!”

Fry is well known as a fan of all things Apple, of course, so some may take his smackdown of the Storm with a pinch of salt. On the other hand, it’s said that he buys pretty much every smartphone released in search of the mobile Holy Grail, in which case he’s well qualified to make an assessment of BlackBerry’s new baby.

Via BBC dot.life blog

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  • JDub

    I hadn’t realised how much of a tech-head he was! Puts many people to shame…

  • http://www.tigmi.com JamesR202

    I have to say that I totally agree with Fry. The screen is slow at changing view types, the keyboard is difficult and cumbersome to hide, and in my opinion is harder to type on than the iPhone.
    I had been waiting for ages to get my hand on the new storm and I did yesterday and within 3 hours I was back on the phone to Vodafone saying please can I have the BOLD instead. I am gutted as I took a gamble and stayed with Voda for this instead of getting an iPhone. Thats a mistake I will not make again.

    In my opinion – DO NOT BUY THE STORM

  • Ben Sillis

    Random fact: Stephen Fry added me on Twitter this morning. I got all excited thinking he found my infrequent and not very insightful posts the complete opposite, but it turns out he has a webmaster running it for him and that he’s following 21,000 people. Rubbish.

  • http://andrew@sampsonian.com sampsonian

    Hi Ben Stills, I’m that webmaster and I don’t manage Twitter for him, he does it all by himself. Best wishes, Andrew Sampson

  • bensillis

    Busy, busy man! Hats off to him. That’s quite clearly not how you spell my name, but I digress.

  • http://andrew@sampsonian.com sampsonian

    Yes sorry about that Ben, I realised that I’d mispelt your name and then went to edit it before getting into trouble but couldn’t. Sorry about that. Are you on Twitter?

  • http://andrew@sampsonian.com sampsonian

    Did I just ask that? Jezuz of course you are. What’s you addy? Yours dimly, Andrew

  • Ben Sillis

    bensillis, for all your infrequent twittering needs!

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