Engadget reviews the storm - 'undercooked'

Mad Mac Maniac said:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/19/blackberry-storm-review/

this article gives a very in-depth, fair review of the storm. But ultimately they decide it is overall underwhelming, yeilding yet another iphone challenger that will fall by the wayside... I figure some of you fan boys may get a kick out of it.

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Let the many BB Storm threads begin. I think this is already number 3...

It will do just fine, like the iPhone many shortcomings can be fixed with a software update.

Nice to see iPhone competition anyways, helps keep Apple on its toes.

I always thought that the clickable screen wouldn't be very good for typing...

anjinhamarota said:

I always thought that the clickable screen wouldn't be very good for typing...

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and before i had an iphone i always thought a touchscreen would suck for typing.

lakaiordie said:

and before i had an iphone i always thought a touchscreen would suck for typing.

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But this article validates my opinion. As soon as i heard about the clickable screen I assumed it wouldn't be good for typing and this article says exactly that.

im not one of those people who leaves my fingers on the screen when i type, i always lift and i can type decently fast that way. so im sure that issue wouldnt be a problem for me, unless there is a UI problem that it lags (which their seems to be, by them). but that can be fixed with an update, the iphone sure as hell had a lot before it was finally semi-stable.

Ha! I've always laughed when people were saying the Storm would be a definitive iPhone killer. Like I said before, it will be tossed in the pile with the rest...

Taken from the review:

"In our tests, we were constantly frustrated by the staggering, laggy movement when trying to type with any speed. You have to let the click depress before you can strike another character, and that makes for a stuttery input process. Additionally, hovering over characters is represented by a blue glow, which looks nice when moving around, but in practice doesn't do a very good job of letting you know what key you're touching. We had spelling errors aplenty. All of this would be helped greatly by an intelligent software component that guessed what you meant to type -- much like the iPhone's predictive element. Unfortunately, what RIM provides is more of a glorified T9, which means if you type "fo," it doesn't know you meant to type "do."

i remember when people complained about the iphones laggy keyboard too.

lakaiordie said:

i remember when people complained about the iphones laggy keyboard too.

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Well that was like two months ago before the firmware 2.1 update.

lakaiordie said:

i remember when people complained about the iphones laggy keyboard too.

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yes they do. they forget that at the least the blueberry have copy paste gesture.

If the iPhone was available on Verizon, and the Storm on ATT, then there'd be a really good reason for a direct comparison.

But I suspect the people who are going to jump carrier, have mostly already done so.

Cask said:

Well that was like two months ago before the firmware 2.1 update.

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this bb is BRAND NEW

do you not remember all the crap that happened on july 11th and before 2.1?

the storm has copy and paste, keyboard rotates in emails and sms, has a better email service. verizon is a good network. probably has a million less dropped calls then the iphone. the only sucky thing is no wifi.

if i could afford another cell phone payment i'd get it.

the iphone is still good though.

lakaiordie said:

this bb is BRAND NEW

do you not remember all the crap that happened on july 11th and before 2.1?

the storm has copy and paste, keyboard rotates in emails and sms, has a better email service. verizon is a good network. probably has a million less dropped calls then the iphone. the only sucky thing is no wifi.

if i could afford another cell phone payment i'd get it.

the iphone is still good though.

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Most of the complaints I've heard so far were hardware related. You're right though, the minor tweaks are addressable.

If you think Engadget's review was lukewarm, you should read the Boy Genius.

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/11/20/verizon-blackberry-storm-review/

Summary: It disappoints in many ways.

This is validation that I made the right choice in going with the iPhone, even though I had to switch carriers and live with less coverage.

I think the most telling here is that the click screen approach is not the holy grail of touch typing that it's touted to be. After reading these reviews I see it as a distinct disadvantage. While it solves one problem that the iPhone has, which is inadvertent clicks, it creates many new ones. Typing is slowed by the effort involved and the "one keypress at a time" restriction, and significant effort is needed to press the outer keys. That would, quite frankly, annoy the hell out of me. Especially the part about the click effort being drastically different for different areas of the screen. No thanks. The outdated Blackberry core OS and the piss poor 3rd party app support do nothing to sway me. Blackberry is heading in the right direction but they have a long way to go. And I'm no fanboy - I gave my phone selection a LOT of thought before I acted. And I do want to see Blackberry do well so that Apple continues to work hard to compete.

i'd like to play with one first before i make any decisions though. wouldnt you?

I still think only the G1, with Android, is the only true competition the iPhone still has. I'm still impressed by Android, but T Mobile's coverage is significantly lacking - thus iPhone for me.

i think the g1 looks horrible, like the actual physical phone was just thrown together with no thought.

Why not announce it on the same day the Storm is released? Excellent marketing strategy if you ask me.

This phone has been hit with bad reviews, so much for the "iphone killer."

This is so common. As is often the case, no one is able to match the engineering and ingenuity of Apple. It's been apparent ever since Steve Jobs brought the iPod to the world.

Let's face it, Apple changed the way the world listens to music. Apple has now changed the way the world uses a phone. I still stand by the statement that I made before the iPhone came out when I said "This will eventually be the number one selling phone in the world."

I'm sorry, but it's apparent that the BB Storm will not come close. (especially with a clutsy keyboard)