The BlackBerry Storm is the first full touchscreen smartphone by RIM. Research in Motion (RIM) has made its mark in making great mobile devices for the business segment with its BlackBerry handsets. RIM’s signature work in most of its devices include a very dependable full qwerty keyboard and the push email technology that’s geared towards the corporate crowd.
It was then not surprising when RIM announced the BlackBerry Storm with a full touch screen interface — an arena that competing manufacturer Apple is making big waves with its iPhone. It was a move that RIM needed to do in order to slow down if not stop Apple’s attempt at eating away its long-dominated market.
The biggest challenge for the BlackBerry Storm when it shed the physical keys was the virtual keyboard. The screen itself is recessed so you need to press down on the display panel instead of just tap. Users familiar with other touch screen phones may find this mechanism a bit odd but for first timers, it only takes a little while to get used to (I still often forget to press down a bit harder every once in a while).
Only four physical buttons are found at the bottom of the display panel that’s dedicated to Send, End, Menu and Return. The virtual keyboard also rotates automatically in landscape mode when the device is positioned sideways.
The Storm sports a large 3.25-inch screen with a resolution of 480 x 360 pixels of up to 65,000 colors. The display delivers bright and crisp details especially when playing video and multimedia files in MPEG4 format. The user interface is very similar to other previous versions of the BlackBerry but the touch navigation becomes a bit frustrating especially when scrolling webpages.
For connectivity, the Storm is equipped with Bluetooth and 3G/HSDPA. RIM completely skipped WiFi functionality which could turn off a lot of data-heavy users expecting this feature to be there. As such, 3G (including GPRS) connectivity is practically essential as the BlackBerry relies on it for delivering push email. But as I said in the TV interview for QTube last week, the lack of WiFi is a deal-breaker.
The built-in autofocus camera is 3.2 megapixels with 2x digital zoom and coupled with a flash. It takes good pictures under decent lighting conditions although the shutter is a bit slow and could result to blurry images even with the flash activated. The handset has a 128MB flash memory and a 1GB internal storage that can be expanded to 16GB with an external microSD card.
The BlackBerry Storm has a 1400mAh battery with a capacity of 6 hours talktime and 15 days on standby. My experience with the push email set to “On” gave me about 2 days worth of usage. To maximize and use the push email functionality, the device requires a BlackBerry service subscription with a RIM partner telcos (both Smart and Globe offer BlackBerry Personal Plans).
I have had my 9500 for about a 2 several weeks now and yesterday when i went to bed then when i got up today it was moved off but i believed power supply had passed away for some purpose, i connected it in to cost and its been in for over an time now and will not change on at all, when i first connect in to battery charger it delivers up the red LED signal in the top right area for about 10 a few moments and then the signal goes off again but the cellphone still probably won’t change on, i have eliminated power supply to try to totally recast but it does not matter, any help would be much valued,
You acquired a really useful blog site I have been here reading for about an hour. I’m a newbie and your achievement is very a lot an inspiration for me.
Hi Guys,
I have had my 9500 for about a 2 weeks now and last night when i went to bed then when i got up this morning it was switched off but i thought the battery had died for some reason, i plugged it in to charge and its been in for over an hour now and will not switch on at all, when i first plug in to charger it brings up the red LED indicator in the top right corner for about 10 seconds and then the indicator goes off again but the phone still wont switch on, i have removed the battery to try to reset but it makes no difference, any help would be much appreciated,
In my BB cannot use a wireless why?????
Does anybody knows when the BB OS.6 will be released for the 9700?
It’s a nice phone because of it’s brand name, it has a nice feature but the disadvantage of this phone is it’s hard to type a text message if you are driving. But all in all it’s good, but I would suggest the blackberry bold. :)
Christmas toddler toys
no wifi!!!!!!!!!!! piece of junk!!!
i’d go for iphone4 instead of BB
what??? 32K in pesos??? that’s too expensive comparing to $200 in the US
how much ang blackberry storm?
i have my storm2 and it do have a wifi…
FYI storm to got a wifi.. :)i think the old storm is the one that has no wifi.. :)
No WIFI? Not for me as well :(
this is a great phone really though for me, its a lil hard to use,,
check kimstore.multiply.com for storm2 i think its 31-32k
the blackberry storm2 got a wifi. fyi. TA!
I bought a storm 2 months ago and I was actually quite excited at getting one back then even after reading some negative reviews of the phone. I was very happy with the first month even with it’s minor problems like “lags”, no wi-fi, a bit bulky and some minor, very minor probs that i didn’t seem to mind at first. But the longer you use it, the more irritating the minor problem becomes. Fortunately though, the latest OS 5.0 fixed all of it in just one update (not including the wi-fi though). After updating the OS the other day, I felt like I am using a different phone. A very cool phone actually. No more lags, accelerometer works pretty well, sms looks like a chat box now with smileys to boot which I seriously enjoy! haha! scrolling through pix is so smooth now unlike before. lots of other features have been added that an owner of a storm with an old OS version will surely appreciate. I can’t wait to get my hands on storm2 though. Anyone selling them yet here on the phil?