Gadgetory

hey everyone jon rettinger here I'm a guest editor for pocketnow.com I'm going to walk you through the software on the just-released rim blackberry storm give you a sense of what it's like to own the device I'm going to take you through the browser the media player contacts mail messages really take you step-by-step through the device and hopefully help you decide if it's right for you or not so let's stick around and joy and I'll see you in the next video bye so we turn the device on you're greeted by a very simple and elegant home screen with the date featured prominently in the middle battery indicator in the upper left on the right side you've got your signal strength and conveniently located right below the battery indicator is a profile switcher so the bulk of the screen is taken up by these two rows which are shortcut keys which consists of two rows of four you can configure these for anything that you'd like you can even had a third row if you choose so we'll go ahead and hit the blackberry button here and take you to the main menu so you can set these order any way you like but here's what they are for me I've got to email icons SMS and text contacts calendar browser full visual voicemail sounds options messages Verizon's proprietary navigation system which supports the built-in GPS chip in the storm instant messaging applications games download setup help search music manage contacts lock and turn device off so some of the stuff you guys are definitely going to want to see and want to know about say it's calendar for the business users out there and you're greeted by a very typical blackberry calendar things that you're used to on the Pearl the curve and some of you at the bold you can view by date and you can tap the day you want to see click it and publicity your appointments very nice very simple typical blackberry so we'll go ahead and go back to the main screen here and the browser is one of the biggest selling points of the storm so let me go ahead and demonstrate that for you I have it already queued up to pocketnow.com now when you scroll through it is very smooth scrolling but it's not flick scrolling meaning when you take your finger off it stops right where you are this is true for contacts and for most of the applications in the menus through the storm well it is a nice silky transition again we take your finger off it's going to stop so some people like that some may not for zooming you've got two options you can get a double tap and let sue min for you or down at the bottom you've got a minus and a plus magnifying glass similar to what's on the t-mobile g1 and you can zoom in or zoom out doing that as well and this is a full HTML capable browser based on the same webkit browser that the iphone uses and it's very full-featured and very robust and I've been relatively impressed with it although at this point it does not support flash so let's go back here and one thing I should mention about the browser as well is that it does not support tabbed internet browsing which I wish it did not so bad and if you want to type in a web page at www and you can type in what you like right there has all of your bookmarks and your history right below it so the next thing is it's got a full visual voicemail very similar to what's found on apple iphone and a verizon has rolled this out on a few other devices essentially what that means instead of seeing an indicator showing the you have one or two voicemails this will actually tell you who the voicemails are from you can select and pick what you want to play as well as a status bar across the bottom lets you fast forward to different points in the voicemails very handy if something i really enjoyed on the storm next thing you've got sounds did you change your profiles from ring to vibrate options your typical blackberry options nothing at any ordinary here and it works with the scrolling like i said before not flick scrolling so when you take your finger off it stops go back here you've got messages very certificate or messages push capabilities setting up and email is very easy all you need to do is type in your email address and your password and they will take care of the rest for you it makes it a very nice and simple transition VZ navigator verizon's proprietary navigation system for turn-by-turn directions which are very nice media this is a very full-featured media phone as well so I'm go ahead and show you some of the cool things that it's got for it so the first one it's got music it's got a full music player and it's broken up by music songs artists albums drawn around playlists so go ahead and play a sample song for you and you can fill it up as much as you want to the 8 gigabytes built in micro SD card here's a demo takes a second to load up as you can hear the speakers are quite loud and those speakers are coming from the bottom right there that's bigger grow very loud so when accelerometer kicked in there and close that up all right let's go back next even have is videos and the screen on on the storm is fantastic and really makes videos pop so I'm going to show you a quick clip here they included a trailer for the movie babylon ad for better or worse so go ahead and play that for you can see what video looks like on the storm so please video quite well and quite loudly again really the video pops on this if you want to watch a movie on an airplane will not be a problem it's got a gorgeous gorgeous screen so let's go back here ringtones select all your ringtones right there and you can set them for any contact you choose it's got a very nice picture of you are two years I'm go ahead and show you that sample pictures and any pictures that you take using the built-in 3.2 megapixel autofocus and camera will show up here as well and any videos you take using that same camera will show up in the video selection it also has a built-in flash and self portrait mirror so put an open a picture and you can flick from picture the next using your finger very nice and easy if you want to zoom in just like a webpage and DoubleTap it and notice when I double tap I'm not depressing the screen I'm just making very light contact and you can scroll around to that same way very cool we'll go back and using the built-in microphone keep going back here you can record voice notes very handy feature and something I've actually used quite frequently remember to pick up milk record it I can forget to pick up your milk so let's go back to the home screen I will keep going camera stick simple camera controls I'll show you that very quickly very similar to what you'll find on the pearl or the curve close out of that clock it's like alarm clock and control the clock same top applications this does have an application store which is quite handy so right now it's not that populate it just has free apps in here but it will have some pay apps as it beginning continues to develop it's got facebook some windows live messenger or google talk nothing else revolutionary and there but it is nice that they do have a built-in application center and i should notice that this is completely over the air for more upgradable so meaning as the device matures rim can push out new features or stability upgrades you can download right over the bill video network instant messaging it comes out of the box equipped with windows live messenger yahoo messenger google talk AOL instant messenger and blackberries fantastic blackberry messenger as we continue to scroll down here applications does come with a bevy of applications tasks calendar a full microsoft word sweet meeting you can create or edit any microsoft office documents so you've got word to go sheet to go which is excel and powerpoint to go which they call slideshow to go another control for your video camera another control for voice notes voice dialing which does not need to be trained it automatically will recognize your voice which is very handy I've always been a fan of the voice dialing in the blackberries password keeper and some saved messages games comes a two built-in games the old blackberry staple brick breaker which I used to love to play on my old pearl I want to show you what that looks like because it is very cool how they did it so instead of using the trackball to control you know can use your finger into the touch screen to put your finger in there and it highlights as you move around it's a very cool take on an old classic and it's very reliable and it's very stable and quick and makes using brickbreaker even more fun than it was before limp close out of there includes a game called word moles well it's a word stretching game downloads well your downloads will go set up gives you very quick easy setup for setting up your email Bluetooth nice and quick and painless help search another control for your music manager connections and locking the device so if since this is a touchscreen and does not have a tactile keyboard I want to show you guys how the keyboards function here so let me go ahead and go to messages go to SMS and I will create a new message here alright I've got a new message ready to go and as you can see that this is in landscape I'm sorry in portrait mode and you've got a shirt type qwerty keyboard very I'd actually identical to what's found on the current pearl but it's very quick and easy to use and as you put your finger over it you get a blue color lets you know which key are on so I'm going to go ahead and type my name is John so recognize it's a new name is John but not too bad it learns what you type and we'll get more accurate as you go one fantastic thing about the blackberry storm is it does support multitouch so copy and paste and such are nice and easy so what you do for copy and paste you hold your finger down take your other finger it can select the text actually very nice and comes relatively intuitive and you can select cop cut copy and paste now if you want to type in full landscape mode take care of advantage of the accelerometer and you've got a full landscape keyboard so I'll type the same thing hello my name is John and you'll notice again as you move your finger over the letters you get that blue glow now that is a little harder to see which letter your finger is on top of but it's not bad so I'll go ahead and type that for you let's see how that works out so not quite so accurate there but not too bad I think it's something that you would get used to the more you use the device I've only had it for a few days but I feel after a few weeks it would become intuitive and second nature and it highlights as you put your finger over and it clicks actually push the screen down and I should mention again that the screen pushing down is nothing revolutionary I was expecting something that would transcend mobile phones in a really unique experience it ends up feeling identical to the new trackpads found on the macbooks and macbook pros I really enjoy actually the screen pushing down well it's not revolutionary I found it became very intuitive something I started to enjoy to use and missed it when I was using my other mobile phones something to keep in mind so the accelerometer is like I showed you here a very nice feature but it can be a little bit laggy so I'll show you here takes a second to turn so one thing about the blackberry is the operating system that's on it was initially developed for non touch screen devices such as the blackberry bold the curve the Pearl and others it was actually adapted for touchscreen meaning it wasn't built for this platform well it does work nice it is a little bit laggy and it can be a little bit slow I think it's something that RIM will fix with software upgrade so I'm not terribly concerned about it but something to keep in mind i'll show you another example that when i hit the blackberry button there's about a second delay it's nothing terribly long but if using the device a lot and it's leping a lot of options you will certainly notice it so guys this is jon rettinger guest editor for pakka now with a software overview of the rim blackberry storm hope you guys enjoyed it and I will see you guys in the next video bye bye hope you guys enjoyed the software overview of the blackberry storm be sure to check out pocketnow.com for more storm coverage and for everything else windows mobile talk to you guys soon bye