Blackberry's first touchscreen device and bold competitor to the iPhone will be available from Verizon for $199 starting November 21. The Storm features a 3.25" hi-resolution display, a 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of internal memory, an internal motion sensor, and both quad-band GSM and CDMA radios, including 3G data on both network standards. The famous Blackberry messaging capability is present, along with the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents on the device, and turn-by-turn GPS with Verizon's VZ Navigator software.
Blackberrys are often the weapon of choice of business users to communicate and stay organized, deployed by the thousands at companies around the world. They've traditionally been a bit short on multimedia capabilities and the fun factor, things the Storm looks to address. But will the Storm stand up to the iPhone 3G and other well-rounded and highly-capable smartphones? We've got our test unit in hand and are working on our in-depth review and scientific testing as you read this. While you wait for that, we've got some first impressions for you...
The Storm presents a reasonably stylish face for a Blackberry, if not ground-breakingly so, with the touchscreen dominating the front, and 4 buttons below - Send, Menu, Back, and End. The touchscreen is bright and extremely crisp with 480 x 360 resolution. The touchscreen offers some tactile feedback, essentially acting like a very large button to register presses, and Blackberry calls this feature SurePress. As you move your finger over icons or buttons on the screen, they are highlighted in blue, but nothing is really selected until you press hard enough for the screen/button to click. The blue highlighting is handy in that it helps you identify what you'll be selecting when you press down, though this highlighting and the actual selection hasn't been entirely accurate in the short time we've had the Storm so far.
The Storm offers 3 keyboard versions, 2 in portrait mode and 1 in landscape mode. By default, the keyboard in portrait mode is Blackberry's SureType one that has 2 letters per key. The other portrait mode keyboard option is traditional multi-tap. When switched to landscape orientation, the keyboard is a full QWERTY. While the blue highlighting that appears when an on-screen button is touched is handy, it doesn't offer much assistance when typing since your fingers obscure the focus of the blue highlighting, including the key you're pressing. There's no pop-out view of the selected key that shows up away from your finger within easy view like you'll find on the iPhone 3G and the spelling auto-correction isn't all that great, so typing on the Storm can be an exercise in frustration.
The Storm's main screen
The 3.2-megapixel camera has an auto-focus lens and a flash, and we hope to see good results with it on par with the HTC Touch Diamond that has the same camera specs. At first blush, the camera's live preview is quite lovely on the large screen, though capturing pictures takes several seconds between the press of the shutter button and the captured image showing up on the screen. The Storm is also capable of capturing video.
The top of the Storm
The bottom of the Storm
The Media application offers one-stop-shopping access to music, videos, pictures. The H-VGA screen does the sample images justice and video is in portrait mode is pretty good. With a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, you'll have no trouble using your favorite headphones with the Storm.
The left side of the Storm
The right side of the Storm
The Storm's interface has a much more modern look, dominated by white text on dark backgrounds, than its predecessors though it's not as consistently responsive from application to application. The menu button brings up the expected pop-up list from the bottom left corner of the screen, but this menu doesn't jive well with the new touch screen interface and feels a bit like a left-over from the scroll ball and jog wheel days. The browser offers a nice desktop-like view of web pages, but scrolling is not very smooth. The Blackberry PIM look to be robust and we don't expect many surprises in these key backbone organizer functions and we'll give them the thorough shakedown we always do.
The Storm's main menu
The Application Center offers 3rd-party application downloads, just like the Android Market for the T-Moand Apple's App Store, and it's live with just a handful of offerings at the moment, some of which are already installed on the Storm out of the box.
The Storm comes with an 8GB microSD card and 1GB of internal memory, a nice amount to start with out of the box. Its 1400mAh battery offers a claimed talk time of up to 6 hours and up to 15 days of standby time - we'll do our standard testing to see how well the Storm holds up in reality. At 4.43" tall, 2.45" wide, and 0.55" thick, the Storm is pretty close size-wise to the iPhone 3G in length and width though it's noticeably thicker than the iPhone, and it's heavier. Below are some comparison pictures of the Storm with an iPhone 3G for your viewing pleasure.
Stay tuned for our full review of the Blackberry Storm!
