BlackBerry Storm hands-on

The BlackBerry Storm is the first handset from Research In Motion (RIM) to feature a touch-based user interface akin to that of Apple's popular iPhone. This may draw more attention from consumers, but business users are likely to stick with more traditional BlackBerry designs.

Available now from Vodafone, the BlackBerry Storm lacks a keyboard and instead has a larger 3.25in screen designed for fingertip control of functions, with just the standard phone call/end keys and a BlackBerry menu and escape key on the front bezel. It also has improved music and video capabilities, such as the ability to play movies and synchronise with the user's iTunes library.

While the Storm also has the usual corporate features, such as the ability to enroll with a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) for push email and administrator control, it seems to be aimed more at consumers.

The Storm has 3G network support, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS hardware for location-based applications, but it lacks Wi-Fi, which many rival devices such as the iPhone have. There is, however, a decent 3.2 megapixel camera.

The Storm's touch-screen and gesture recognition are bound to invite comparison with Apple's iPhone, and the two input systems are quite similar. With both devices, users can scroll up and down menus and email lists by swiping the screen, and tap the screen to zoom in within applications such as the browser. The main menu has icons just the right size to be easily tapped with a fingertip, and both devices automatically change screen orientation if you twist them around.

Where the Storm differs is in its clickable screen, which lets the user press down – like clicking a mouse button - to select an option. This feature means it is possible to scroll through your emails and menus without accidentally opening one or unintentionally triggering some function, which we have found a continual bugbear with other touch-enabled phones.

The clickable screen should also make an on-screen soft keyboard more usable, but we did not find this to be the case. The click feedback does help, but we found we could only tap out text at a fraction of the speed possible with a real keyboard, even the thumb keyboards of other smartphones. The problem is that it is tricky to hit the right key, and although the Storm lights up the key it thinks you are trying to press, this forces you to look carefully at the keyboard before you push down.

Using the soft keyboard gets easier with practice, but we still doubt that professionals who rely on a Blackberry for everyday email access will be satisfied with this. We showed the Storm to several colleagues who already use other BlackBerry devices, and most expressed their dislike of this input method.

Actually, the Storm has two separate on-screen keyboards. If you hold the device in portrait orientation, it shows a SureType keypad similar to that of the BlackBerry Pearl, where each key has two letters and the phone uses a predictive algorithm to work out what you are trying to type. Twist the device round to landscape mode, and the Storm uses the longer side of the screen to display a full Qwerty layout instead.

As with Apple's iPhone, the touch screen is fine for dialling voice calls with an on-screen numeric keypad, as the keys here are larger. RIM has also wisely included physical buttons to mute the sound and lock/unlock the screen.

One useful application of the touch screen is multi-touch support. If you place one finger at the start of a block of text and another at the end, the Storm highlights everything in between, making it easier to cut and paste.

In size, the BlackBerry Storm is about the same as RIM's older BlackBerry 8800 model at 112.5mm long x 62.5 wide x 13.95 in depth. Apple's iPhone is slightly longer, but less thick, but the Storm is noticeably heavier than the iPhone and other BlackBerry models at 155g. Nevertheless, it can still be carried in a jacket pocket.

Recent BlackBerry models have had good displays, and the Storm is no exception. Its 480 x 360 pixel screen rivals that of the iPhone for brightness and vivid colour. Vodafone supplied our review unit with a selection of media such as movie trailers, and we found the playback quality of these impressive.

We did experience some issues while testing out the BlackBerry Storm. While we were able to get a 3G Vodafone network connection in central London, we found this dropped off to GPRS speed in other locations and sometimes lost the signal altogether.

We also found that the motion sensor, which detects the orientation of the device, often caused the Storm to change screen format when we did not wish it to.

BlackBerry's web browser also caused us some frustration with links. We found that on some news sites, for example, tapping on a headline simply zoomed in, rather than opening the link to the article itself. The browser has a cursor mode, whereby a mouse pointer can be moved around the screen by fingertip control, but switching to this did not fix the problem.

The Storm comes with a variety of applications, such as a version of the Documents To Go suite from Dataviz, which enables users to view and edit email attachments sent as Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint files, including Office 2007 formats.

It also includes the Vodafone Music Store, which enables users to buy and download music tracks. However, while the Storm's built-in Media player can supposedly synchronise with a user's iTunes music library, we could not find any way to do this nor any mention of this in the supplied documentation.

Many other applications look like they are ready installed, such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Google Maps, but touching their icon actually triggers a download from the web. The same is true for most of the IM applications, such as ICQ, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger.

RIM's own BlackBerry Maps application for navigation is built-in however, as is BlackBerry Messenger.

The Storm has 1GB of built-in memory, but this can be expanded to 16GB using a microSD slot for Flash cards, located next to the SIM card slot behind the handset's rear cover.

Powering the Storm is a 1400mAh lithium battery pack rated by RIM at 15 days on standby and up to 5.5 hours of talk time. However, we found that the charge level indicator on the screen seemed to deplete faster than previous Blackberry models we have tested, resulting in our having to re-charge the unit every day or so during tests.

Written by Daniel Robinson
vnunet.com