Friday, December 5, 2008

BlackBerry Storm – Epic in a Phone

Well I finally got my BlackBerry Storm, and all I can say is, it’s AWESOME! It’s everything I expected to be and more. It may have a few little bugs but hey what phones don’t when they first come out. Yes people complain, “there are no apps, we want apps” well think about it. Did the iPhone have apps when it came out…no, not at all. Those came out more than a year later with the release of the iPhone 3G. You can’t expect BlackBerry to just magically create and awesome phone and a full on app store, while making the BlackBerry Storm’s firmware perfect. Well you can, but if that was to happen, the phone would never be released! They may have brought it out one update too soon, but hey we’re lucky now we can update things, unlike in the past where once you got a phone, you never updated it…ever.

I have used my iPod Touch a ton. I used it so much I would carry it around with me in my pocket with my other phone. I knew I needed to get a smart phone and without the desire to switch carriers, the announcement of the Storm was amazing to hear. Unfortunately, the Storms were way under shipped so I had to check back daily, and I finally got it last Tuesday! Opening the box, and seeing the amazing design, all black, was awesome. I have now gotten so used to using my phone for music and calendar and all that, that I forgot my iPod Touch at home when I came back up, and I didn’t realize I left it there for an entire week!

Now to reviewing the device. I love it. It did take me about a week to get used to typing on it, and now I type faster on it than on my iPod Touch. When I show my phone to people they try just tapping and the typical response is “oh this phone sucks, it doesn’t respond to me clicking it”. I then tell them to push the button and they are always astonished about how weird it is. Unfortunately now, so many are used to the iPhone, they aren’t willing to change or accept the change the Storm made, which is why many people dislike the device. Everything has worked perfectly. Even on my Mac, without using bootcamp, I can sync it thru VMWare Fusion to the BlackBerry Desktop Manager. I now have my calendars syncing thru iCal to Google Calendar to my Phone, all wirelessly, all automatically updating. If one changes, it will reach all others in under 15 minutes, however you can always force sync it. One complaint I have is that it takes a freaking long time to power on, however you never really need to turn the phone off. I’ve actually heard that you shouldn’t turn off the phone from various sources. Documents to Go, an app that comes on the phone, doesn’t like reading my documents from my Mac, but that isn’t a huge deal to me. Texting is a breeze, syncing contacts works amazingly well. The browser may run slow at times, but I mean it’s a mobile device, you can’t expect T1 speeds on it! I hope you enjoyed my review, if you ever try one, give it time, don’t expect the iPhone experience because it isn’t an iPhone, it is a totally different phone than you have probably ever experienced!


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