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Blackberry Storm: Initial Impressions

2008-11-22
hey everyone jon rettinger from john for lakers calm and i want to give you my initial impression of the blackberry storm I've had one since early Thursday morning and I haven't had enough time to really give it a thorough review but i do want to give you my initial impressions i did a comparison video at the iphone and this video is going to be just about the storm and I let it stand on its own legs so first thing running on verizon's network well this is going to vary from your location I have been very impressed the verizon's network I haven't used them in about eight years and call quality is clear I haven't had a single dropped call and there evdo network when they have strength is almost as fast as Wi-Fi very impressive network well that's really going to vary just my impressions of the call called on the device has been absolutely fantastic so one thing to note about the blackberry is REM has traditionally made non touch screen devices what they've done with the storm is adapt their operating system I'm not going to go into numbers of operating systems but what they did is they adapted it for touchscreen beginning it wasn't initially made for a touchscreen device and oftentimes that shows menus can be a little bit laggy moving through menus can be laggy selecting things can be laggy I'm gonna get to all that in a minute but it definitely shows that this was not developed as a touchscreen device it was more adapted for a touchscreen device so those are some of the negatives one thing that I really have to say I do love and I'm getting very used to is the click screen on the blackberry storm and think you can really see that but it does depress just a little bit when you're when you're typing or pushing any sort of button on it it feels very similar to the track pad on the macbook actually feels almost identical and it really is intuitive I know there's been some concerns that you can't type as fast because you have to wait for the screen to pop back up but that has not that issue for me it pops up almost instantaneously although a concern I do have is possibly dust getting around the outside of the phone when it's pushed in but it seems like rim to care that and there appears to be a small membrane around it build quality of device is fantastic it's solid it feels good in the hand the back is made of metal it's got a gorgeous 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and video recording capabilities mms it's got a full HTML browser and of course got the blackberry email system rims email system is fantastic I forgot how good it was I haven't used a blackberry in about a year and a half and it is unbelievable pushes instantaneous it's quick it's fast you know I really couldn't be happier with email aspect of it so one of the gripes I do have with the phone I think one of the ways where it shows that it wasn't initially made for a touch brain is with the accelerometer it is quite laggy somebody give you guys a quick demonstration of that here so I'm gonna turn this on device is just simply locked turn it notice there's two seconds away and that's not so bad occasionally to the lake and gums get twice that long so let me go ahead and show you another example here of that we unlock the device accelerometer something that you have to use very often on the phone little bit laggy but not terribly bad so let me show you a website happen to have John for lakers calm queued up here i'ma show you they saw her ometer again on the website I've made the brightness as low as i can so i hope you guys can see that so not so bad so let me give you another example here go back to the home screen i get the blackberry menu button there still is a little bit of a delay so we couldn't push that it takes about a second forward to pop up now i'm going to compare that to let's say the blackberry bold which the operating system was made for a device like this so when I hit the blackberry button right there it's an instantaneous pop-up scrolling through menus everything comes up you know immediately it's not a big issue and the lag is not that substantial but when you're using an opt-in you're hitting a lot of buttons it definitely becomes noticeable so that's one thing to be concerned about the phone does have a visual voicemail service which is quite nice and it looks similar to that other phone that I'm not going to mention but visual voicemail is great it tells you who is calling one thing that I've heard about the device and the reason that there were a little bit of shortages on launch day research in motion also noted rim had plenty devices ready to go but there was a glitch in operating system they were getting ready to release if I actually had to reflash all the phones about a few days before release and obviously that is quite time consuming so there weren't as many initially out for launch day as there should have been so what that means is that this device is running an older version of a firmware now what is ok about that is that this phone is over the air upgradable meeting the operating system can be upgraded over there so I'm not that concerned I think things like the lagging and the accelerometer slow down will be fixed with an over there update this is the first time it's been released and it does have a fair amount way to go before it's perfected but it is a great device it can play music play videos the screen is gorgeous you can view your pictures I gotta say I really have been very happy with the device while it says I have actually been using this as my primary phone uh since Thursday and I've been very happy with it um now am I going to switch to use this as my primary device that's yet to be seen but I can't say that I'm enjoying using it right now so guys stay tuned to the channel on the website for some more reviews and some more thoughts and musings on the blackberry storm I have other phones kind of in the docket here that I want to review and share with you guys as well but want to give you guys just my initial impressions of the blackberry storm if you're with verizon or you're thinking about switching i recommend going to a verizon store and playing with the phone it's certainly not for everybody but it is for a lot of people texting on it is very quick the keyboard can be a little bit squirrely it's hard when you push the button you get a little blue light that glows but you can't always tell where that blue light is coming from so you frequently have miss types but that may just because I'm not used to the keyboard yet so I'm gonna hold judgment on that and I have gotten used to the suretype keyboard very quickly so guys if you want to get the phone you know like I said go check it out at a store and make your own decision I'm not here to convince your one way or another just to help educate so guys jon rettinger John for lakers calm be sure to check out the website and if you want some exclusive content to follow me on Twitter ww twitter com / John for lakers hope you enjoyed these initial overview and musings and thoughts to the device and I'm off to dinner and I'll see you guys later
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