Blackberry Storm

[Inknsteel]

There was a thread on internet gadgetry not too long ago, but I posted in there that I was going to pick up a Blackberry Storm. There seemed to be a few people who expressed interest in it, so after a week of owning it, I thought I'd post a review for you.

Well, after less than a week, I'm pretty sure I'm ready to take the Storm back and get the Curve instead. The Storm is a great concept. It's supposed to be the closest competitor to the iPhone. But really, this phone isn't ready to be released. It started the first time I hooked it up to my computer. It froze up during the initial backup and I had to pull the battery which blew out all the data and applications I had on there, including the VZ Navigator, Docs to Go, and the preinstalled games and whatnot. I went back to the Verizon store and asked if they could flash it back to the software it came with. They said it was still too new, that they didn't have the software to reload it with. The rep gave me the option to return it and go back to my old phone until they can ship me a new Storm. The problem with that is that they aren't shipping any more of them until December 15th at the earliest. I can only assume that they're holding them back until the next firmware update. But either way, I think I'm ready to give up on the Storm and switch to the curve.

Some of the "Early Adoption" bugs that have annoyed me to this point:

-The accelerometer. Very frequently, the screen doesn't realign when you turn the phone in your hand. When it does, it takes about 2 seconds to flip.
-The phone randomly goes into camera mode when you're using it. There doesn't seem to be any pattern, it will just flip to the camera, sometimes when you're in the middle of writing a message.
-Typing without the feel of the physical keys is a PAIN IN THE BUTT. A lot of times, I'll touch and click a letter, only to have the letter next to it show up.
-Corners of the screen don't respond well
-Camera quality. For a 3.2MP camera, I thought the pics would be better quality than my LG EnV with 2.0MP. That's not the case. The pics are very grainy and often blurry. This could be due in part to the fact that it takes like 7 second from the time you push the button to the time it takes the pic.

Overall, I think that RIM and Verizon were in too much of a hurry to get this thing to the market, and now the users are the ones suffering for it. Maybe they'll get the bugs and kinks worked out before the bad publicity kills the Storm all together, but as of now, it isn't worth the money at all.