TechWatch: Buy The BlackBerry Storm

By: Chris DannenThu Nov 20, 2008 at 10:30 AM

You didn't want an iPhone anyway.

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Go ahead - run to a Verizon store on Thursday, November 20th and plunk down your hard-earned $200 for RIM's new touch-screen marvel, the BlackBerry Storm. If you haven't already bought an iPhone from Apple and AT&T, then the Storm is inevitably the smartphone for you.

Who am I to make such a personalized exhortation? Well, the question really is: who are you?

If you've been aching for a smartphone and haven't yet taken the plunge, it means a few things. Firstly, you probably don't have a Mac. If you did, you'd already be sold on their stellar OS X operating system, and you'd blindly - and correctly - trust that the diminutive iPhone version of OS X would work great. You would have already bought an iPhone, and you'd be puttering around with some magical screen-sharing app instead of reading up on BlackBerrys.

If you do indeed have a Mac, but you haven't gone with the iPhone, you might be a Verizon customer already locked into a contract. You can breathe easy, Verizon customers. You don't absolutely have to switch to AT&T to get a good smartphone experience; the Storm provides a great one. But if you are a Mac-and-Verizon person, beware: BlackBerry's serviceable MediaSync software won't be released for Mac until sometime next year. So it'll be a while before you can sync your new Storm with your Mac contacts, calendar and iTunes playlists.

If you're not a Mac or Verizon person, and you haven't bought an iPhone, then you might be an enterprise user who is sick of the subpar quality of the Pearl or the relative obesity of the other BlackBerrys. The good news is that the Storm finally makes use of the too-big BlackBerry footprint and offers a litany of cool stuff: a gorgeous, bright 480x360 display that lets you type emails and surf the Net in landscape mode; visual voicemail; world-phone functionality; and expandability of up to 16GB (an 8GB SD card is included.) No longer are you forced to carry around a brick just to have a keyboard and decent Exchange email service. And notably, the Storm is more brick-like than any BlackBerry before, weighing 5.5 ounces. By comparison, the Curve weighs 3.9 ounces, and the iPhone 4.7 ounces. It feels substantial, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Of course, as an enterprise user, let's say you have the luxury of being carrier-agnostic, and you're trying to choose between AT&T's new BlackBerry Bold and Verizon's boy wonder. That decision is a relatively simple one; AT&T's Bold has WiFi, which the Storm, horrifyingly, does not. But the Storm can play video in big format on its glorious 3.5-inch screen, has a better camera (3.2MP over 2MP) and has an hour more of talk-time on its battery (4.5 hours vs. 5.5 hours). Pick your preference: WiFi or long-lasting multimedia.

What about T-Mobile's Google phone, the G1? It's not a truly touch-screen device with its pop-out keyboard, so it doesn't merit equal discussion here. But if you're considering the G1, too, then check out the FastCompany.com review here.

Is the Storm an ideal device? By no means. Besides its heartbreaking lack of WiFi, it has other niggling issues: namely, the cognitive load involved in using a device that is both touch- and button-navigated. With the iPhone, everything you can do in a given application appears on the screen, so your know your options with a glance. With the Storm, there are two levels of input - the buttons that appear on the screen, as well as the four keys below it. That can engender some confusion.

For example, in the browser, the best way to go back is via the “back” key below the screen, even though the rest of the browsing is done with finger taps. And when making a call, you're best served by opening the call menu with the “send” key, even though to enter your contacts, you'd touch the screen. It's nothing that you can't get used to, but hand the Storm to someone who's never used it before - even a smartphone veteran - and they might get frustrated quickly. Another unfortunate: when the phone is in portrait mode, the only two available keyboards are SureType and regular keypad multi-tap. This is infuriating when you're trying to enter a contact with a proper name, and you have to either do it dumbphone-style by hitting number keys repeatedly, or deal with SureType trying to botch every surname. The accelerometer is also not as responsive as it should be, leaving the phone hanging in the wrong orientation seconds after you rotate it.