More than just the first “touch” BlackBerry, the Storm 9530 delivers the world’s first clickable screen. To click on an icon you must push your finger down onto the display until it dimples inward and then pops back. Writing an e-mail with it is like using a typewriter made out of bubble wrap. It is novel, unusual, needed to some, but utterly useless to others. You might like it, you might loathe it, or you might simply get used to it, either way it will take you a few days to find out. It is a contentious feature for what would normally be a hit cellphone for RIM, who clearly is experimenting in an effort to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. I admire their experimentation, which offers many bright features, even if I can’t recommend it, and eagerly look forward to what comes next from the labs at Research In Motion.
Like many touch screen handsets the Storm is a slab of glass encased in black plastic and yet it doesn’t seem so. A slick, black limousine is what I first thought of when I saw it. The chrome trim, the beveled ends, and a menu system of deep blacks and neon icons that look like the back-lit dials on the dashboard of a luxury car all work to elegantly distinguish the Storm from similar cellphones.
It’s a surprise the number of physical buttons that remain, many hidden from view. There are both call and disconnect buttons for the phone, a menu and back button for accessing deeper application settings and quicker navigation, and side buttons for activating voice calling, the digital camera, and adjusting the volume. Hidden within the very top corners are two additional buttons, one for locking the screen, the other for muting the phone. Both are placed so discreetly as to be invisible and with the Storm’s beveled edge are unlikely to be pressed by accident.
The 3.25” screen is a gorgeous display, vibrant like the BlackBerry Bold’s, but of course much larger. It is excellent for watching videos, although best when using headphones over the built-in speakerphone which can be directional, creating tinny or distorted audio depending on how you turn it in your hands.
“SurePress” is the name RIM gives their touch-and-click screen and it’s a system built around three layers of interaction; Firstly, you can gently slide your finger across the glass to scroll through menus and flip through photo slideshows. Secondly, you can rest your fingertip on the screen to highlight an option, select an action, or hover the cursor to move it along a string of text. Lastly you must press down on the screen to click selected icons or activate the keys on the virtual keyboard. A built-in accelerometer allows the screen to quickly switch between portrait and landscape views and between full QWERTY and SureType keyboards.
RIM offers some surprising touch screen tricks. With two fingers, each placed at the beginning and end of a body of text you can select it for copying and pasting, resting your finger on a sender’s name in the messages index will sort them by contact, and you have the option of activating an on-screen cursor for your finger to control like a mouse. It’s clear that RIM has invested a great deal of thought into how touch controls can be used. Some phones I’ve tested have had a touchscreen merely for the sake of having a touchscreen, that’s not the case here.
The simplicity of the touchscreen controls can seem at odds with the complexity of the BlackBerry operating system which retains its deep layers of menu options, settings, and directories. Clicking the menu button will bring up a laundry list of options that you might use only once in a blue moon. From search bars in the media player to selecting the option to switch applications, one of the tasks facing RIM as they move forward with touch screen displays is to simplify their software and find more efficient ways to offer settings and controls.
With dual-mode connectivity, the Storm uses the EV-DO network locally for messaging and web surfing and the more popular UMTS/HSPA and EDGE networks used by international services for data roaming. While downloading e-mail attachments is lightning-fast, I find the web browser tends to slow down in full-html mode with a great deal of buffering and script loading. Using these features outside of Canada can be quite expensive and so the options to either turn off the data connections completely or simply disable data roaming are available. A Wi-Fi connection, which would offer faster web surfing and cheaper international data options, is sorely missing.
One of the Storm’s highlight features is its 3.2 Megapixel camera which includes a flash, touch-controlled zoom, mechanical autofocus and image stabilization plus the ability to record video to a SD memory card. The controls are simple, the results are great. It’s quite a shock.
What isn’t a shock are the messaging features which remain a BlackBerry strength with support for up to ten e-mail accounts, both personal and work with IT administration and controls for enterprise use. One application allows you to send e-mail, PIN, SMS, and BlackBerry Messenger communications. Complimenting this is the included DataViz Documents To Go suite which allows you to open and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. I found that while the clickable virtual keyboard was manageable for short messaging, when applied to editing full-length documents it wasn’t rewarding enough for serious use.
Boosting the Storm’s value is a healthy list of sophisticated features including built-in GPS with BlackBerry maps, BlackBerry Media Sync for importing iTunes music libraries, Desktop Manage r software for synchronizing calendar and contact data from a PC as well as converting and importing media files from a home computer. Voice dialing, conference calling, noise and echo cancellation, Bluetooth 2.0 and Bluetooth Stereo Audio, along with a removable battery that provides about five hours of talk time all combine to deliver a premium mobile experience.
The BlackBerry Storm is certainly one of the most capable touch screen phones on the market and after using it for almost two weeks I’m surprised to find that I am still not fully adjusted to its clickable screen and touch-altered BlackBerry operating system. It is sluggish and slow to respond at times, unresponsive at others. I find the highlight and click controls make it too easy to accidentally trigger a feature or setting and with so many options, difficult to discover which settings have been changed by accident. I lost my web browser for an entire day and still don’t know how I brought it back. As I write this, the GPS feature is missing, the icon has just disappeared. It’ll come back like the web browser did, but what a pain.
The Storm is an experimental step in the right direction for RIM, one that shows exciting promise, but too much of a hybrid, evolutionary step between the BlackBerry of old and the TouchBerry of the future. While we wait for that to arrive, it’s more rewarding to stick with the Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry Bold or the iPhone which remains the standard to beat.
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