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While today’s slew of touch phones are all striving to emulate the iPhone’s fluid multi-touch magic – the Android-powered T-Mobile G1 is the closet yet – BlackBerry creator RIM has approached the touchscreen concept from a completely different angle. The manufacturer’s debut smartphone, the Storm, is the first handset to feature fully clickable touchscreen technology.
Surely, a clickable touchscreen is a paradox of sorts, but it works exactly how you’d imagine it. Your finger can happily graze the display and the new BlackBerry Bold-styled menu system without inadvertently setting it off. Once you’ve highlighted a selection, you press down on the screen and wait for the mechanised click.
Right click
Oddly, it works brilliantly, its success down to the reassurance that brushing the display won’t result in volley of expletives while those of us weaned on a mechanised world can still find the comfort in a resounding click from a touch phone.
The phone itself is populates the heavyweight end of the touch-phone family, roughly a little shorter than the pocket-denting HTC Touch HD. It’s a price to pay for an expansive 3.25in but while not as stunning as the Touch HD’s gigantic WVGA eye-popper, it’s still perfectly geared for a seamless internet surfing experience.
The web browser lets you toggle between page fit and full-fat web view, using your fingers to deftly scroll through and around pages. A quick double-click will zoom in while pressing the escape key pans outs again.
What, no Wi-Fi?
With HSPDA download speeds on tap, web pages load pretty quickly, although the absence of Wi-Fi is frankly bewildering. The more cynical will see this as a ploy by the networks to rack in the data charges but whatever the reason a phone of this stature should have the latest wireless technology onboard.
The Storm also features some of the best virtual keyboards we’ve thumbed. Of course, the clickable screen helps but its responsive accelerometers let you easily switch between SureType and standard phone layouts in portrait view or full spacious QWERTY in landscape mode. The keypads are so slick, typos were almost non-existent.
Reveiw continues after the break...
App store open for business
Elsewhere, RIM has opened its doors to its Application Center, so Storm owners can download apps and software. Right now, it’s light on content, with usual suspects like Facebook, Google Maps, leading IM clients, YouTube and Flickr apps filling up the shelves. But with its SDK kit available to third-party developers, expect some weird and wonderful apps to appear soon.
With the exception of its efficient built-in GPS receiver and support for A-GPS, the rest of the Storm’s feature list is a little underwhelming. The autofocus-led 3.2MP snapper is decent enough but we expect a 5MP at the very least.
Similarly, the integrated 3.5mm headphone jack is nice touch but the music player, although festooned with bass audio boosters, still sounds a little muddy, even with your quality earphones plugged in. And we’ve gone the whole review without mentioning its peerless push email set-up. But then you already know the score there.
The Storm’s canny clickable touchscreen makes it one of the less irksome touch phones to paw and it no doubt represents the BlackBerry Holy Grail for hardcore fans. But for the rest of us, had RIM fitted Wi-Fi and spent closer attention to its other features we would have fallen for the BlackBerry Storm, rather than just admiring it.
Tech Specs
- Bluetooth
- Yes
- Dedicated MP3 player software
- Yes
- Dimensions
- 112.5 x 62.2 x 13.9mm
- FM radio
- No
- Main camera resolution
- 3.2MP
- Memory card slots
- Yes
- Memory card type
- MicroSD
- Operating system
- BlackBerry
- Standby time
- 360 hours
- Storage
- 1GB
- Supported music formats
- MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA
- Talktime
- 6 hours
- Video resolution
- 320x240px
- Weight
- 155g
- Wi-Fi
- No
- Xenon flash
- No
Comments
amberain
3 years ago
Use this DRM removal Software http://www.all-media-converter.com/media-converter.html#136 to strip DRM license from iTunes protected AAC(.m4p) music .m4v movie and downloaded .wma .wmv from Napster, Rhapsdy, Windows Media Centre etc, then Play them on your smart Blackberry Storm.
mikeb1972
4 years ago
I for one love the storm, i have difficulty using my hands alot of the time but this phone is so easy to use that i would recomend it to all
JuswantRai
4 years ago
I'm a techie and generally love new gadgets. I read a few mixed reviews on this phone and decided to give it a go. Out of the box very impressive screen & features. Synced with my itunes got my emails looking good. Screen is very impressive. Getting the hang of the typing on the touch screen. 3G was fast when I got a good signal In reality as a phone this is pants. I found it heavy, bulky & clunky . Battery you will be lucky if it lasts a day. Having missed four calls in a row I threw in the towel and sent it back after two weeks.
marcusroyle
4 years ago
I've had mine for 6 weeks now and am generally very happy. I use it(other than as a phone) mainly for business e-mail synchronising with Lotus Notes and for the internet browsing. Both of these are excellent. There are occassional minor glitches with the response time, portrait/landscape switching and screen going blank while it thinks about what it is suposed to be doing. I am expecting that software updates will fix all of these. I have also used the GPS but with the screen on constantly it is very power hungry so only really good for emergency use but let's face, if it wasn't an emergency you'd use a proper sat nav. I recommend this phone, especially for anyone using Lotus Notes for e-mail.
killerpants
4 years ago
I wrote a review on how good this phone on this website a month a go. It looks like the webmaster keep only the negative reviews on here. A month later, this phone is my best phone to date. love the design, clickable touch screen, sms and email writing, suretype is brillant. This is the best phone for typing messages. 3g web browsing is fast. It does multitasking very well copy and paste from any application into a email. The best thing is getting emails blackberry keeps its business continuity with this phone. Blackberry makes a good OS which does not get viruses unlike Microsoft. The one thing it lacks is wifi, there are some clitches on response issues sometime but that can be fix with the new updates. My one works fine. A superb phone, highly recommend.
FARRAGO350
4 years ago
I purchased the Storm from Vodafone, the actual build quality of the handset was second to none and all seemed well until it started crashing/freezing especially when tilting the screen for landscape/portrait format. I periodically had no signal on the handset (read SOS constantly) even though my old Nokia N95 sat next to it had twice as much signal. It wouldn't let me have my diary/important dates displayed on the homescreen as the Nokia used to. As is written above, the typing became unbearable, it constantly took a lifetime to type text messages, probably needs a stylus, or this phone should just be for people with piano fingers. I took it back to Vodafone for a refund under the 14 day returns policy, I am currently looking at getting the HTC Touch HD.
moll51
4 years ago
STORM IN A TEA CUP Mine went back... not a patch on the BOLD. Very slow, too many glitches. Shame that vodafone launched it early withiout ironing out the problems.
GGC
4 years ago
that s an extremely bad handset unless they can do rescue update asap so far it s the fell down of rim
Tigger2
4 years ago
Not much of a review but a warning as a Vodafone technical support member told me this phone is not designed to handle podcasts. The reason I couldn't download a podcast was because the device does not is not advertised as doing any such thing and is not supported. I'll put the full details in the forum.