The BlackBerry Storm 2: A New User’s Perspective
“When is Verizon going to get the contract for the iPhone?” I have never owned a smart phone so I was a bit apprehensive when my good friend and independent Verizon consultant, Lance Burkhardt (Twitter Username: @SirLance99 or @SirSynct), offered to lend me a BlackBerry Storm 2 phone to let me play around with. He knew I had been looking and was in the market for a new phone and service because my contract with T-Mobile was up and I had complained several times through Twitter that I was unhappy with their network coverage.
A little back story. When we first met I was probably the millionth person to ask him when Verizon was going to opt-in for the Apple iPhone because I had heard from anybody that had AT&T that while the iPhone was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it was just on a unreliable service with even more unreliable service. I should know because my wife and I were on Singular before they were bought out by AT&T. Even back then I felt that Singular’s customer service was lacking. In any event, when the iPhone came out many critics had said that Apple was too quick to choose a service carrier and I tend to agree. Keep in mind the cell phone market it changing as fast as the computer hardware and software market. Innovation wise the envelope keeps getting pushed further and further. So how do I know which phone or service to go with? The options these days are mind boggling with features, options, pricing and data rates.
Now I know I have been talking a lot about the iPhone, but the good news is that Verizon and Research In Motion (RIM), the creators of the BlackBerry, didn’t taking the competition with AT&T lying down. When AT&T and Apple first came out with the iPhone it caught Verizon, RIM, and Motorola all by surprise. Before the iPhone the Razor and Blackberry were the hottest selling phones on the market. Obviously, nothing is meant to last forever as technology companies invest money in R&D and tight project deadlines to be the first to market in the never ending battle for customer loyalty. RIM had a competitive strategy and dominance that was the business market and the only real competition at the time was the Palm Treo. However, RIM was looking to have an answer to the iPhone which was gaining market share due to its ability to reach a wide variety of marketing demographics.
That answer was the BlackBerry Storm (a touchscreen smart phone). It showed great promise, but it was considered a hasty response to the competition and consumers voiced their opinion about it loudly forcing Blackberry to go back to the drawing board for a phone that could compete in the burgeoning smartphone market. They quickly made improvements to the existing model by answering consumer complaints with the BlackBerry Storm 2.
“I’ve still got a Motorola Razor v2. It is going to take me awhile to get use to a smartphone like the BlackBerry Storm 2.” I’ve had a razor for quite some time and when Lance offered to lend me a Blackberry Storm 2 I must admit being the tech geek that I am I acted like it would be no big deal and I knew what I would be doing, but in reality I was apprehensive about the learning curve. The thing that I have always had a hard time with the Razor is the keyboard. We live in a world were time is money and reading a text message is faster then listening to a voicemail according to Chris Brogan, and I tend to agree. 
The problem I have is I have never been a fan of texting. The BlackBerry Storm 2 takes care of that with intuitive word generation and with my big thumbs that is a big plus. It no longer takes nearly as much time to get a text message or email off from the phone which it the point of any smart phone in being able to be more efficient and productive. I know I can get more done with emails and other forms of communication when I am at the doctor’s office waiting for 45 minutes for a 5 minute visit. The great thing I like about Verizon’s network with regards to this is that the connection is live and real time, not a timed inbox check in like other network setups.
The main thing about the Storm 2 interface is the fact that it feels like it’s two phones – one as a normal touchscreen, which is a nice and responsive capacitive effort, and another the clickable display, which confirms any selection you make. It’s very disconcerting the first time you use it – it takes a long time to start trusting this method, as your natural reaction is that pushing into the screen is going to ruin accuracy.
The interface itself is a fairly clean affair, especially if you’re familiar with a BlackBerry – the home screen offers a half menu in portrait mode, with your eight favorite applications, and when moved into landscape all the menu icons become available.
Pretty much every icon on the screen can be clicked on to display further information – such as the connections tab in the top right-hand corner, which gives access to the full list of all active and inactive connections on offer, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and mobile data.This is a nice touch, as elements like messaging or contacts aren’t cluttered up with extra icons to expand the selection.
There’s a variety of information you can add to a contact to make it easier to interact with them from the Storm 2 – obviously you can pop a picture on there, but you can also add a birthday, web page or company information too, which is useful when it’s a work contact (or someone you like to stalk but are pretty forgetful).
The dialer is similarly simple to use – it has large, easy-to-hit buttons and a call list to choose from. It doesn’t allow smart dialing (where you can start typing a name using the keypad and it presents a list of possible names to choose from based on the keystroke combination) but you can select a contact and find out your exact call history to and from that number.
The messaging center allows you to view all your received mail at once – be it Facebook, SMS or email. You can also choose to start an IM conversation from here too, with the likes of Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger included in the box. As you can see, messaging is a real winner on the Storm 2, and far better than the original thanks to auto-correct and a multi-touchscreen, which lets you type on two areas at once.
The camera is very much what you’d expect a camera to be from a BlackBerry – it’s functional, it performs well enough in decent light and it works quickly. Shutter speed could be improved somewhat as we had to wait a little too long to start another picture, but overall we were fairly impressed. While the Storm 2 only has a 2x digital zoom, a nice touch comes in the fact you can stroke the screen up and down to zoom in and out – this is something we think more touchscreen phones should employ, as it’s the kind of ‘cool factor’ they can and should exploit.
The rest of the camera functionality is basic – you can set the single LED flash to fire or not, a half press of the easy-to-find shutter button will bring decent auto-focus and the image stabilization seems to work pretty well. Pictures don’t always come out in the best quality, especially when an element of low light creeps in, but then again you’re not going to be trying to win any photography prizes with the Storm 2 we suspect.
Some nice touches once the photo is taken do appear though – not only can you edit and set the photo for use elsewhere on the device (for a contact or as a wallpaper, for instance) but there’s also an option to email it, send it as an SMS or post it on Facebook or Twitter if you’ve got those applications installed. In fact, the gallery mode is much as you’d expect in the same way as the camera – it just does what you need it to do – you can slide through the pictures with a simple finger swipe and post them to various locations as described above easily.
As you can imagine the BlackBerry Storm 2 is jam-packed with all manner of technology for connecting to other people and networks – and all of it works as smoothly as you’d like too.
From the home screen you’ve got once click access to the communication manager, which lets you turn off everything from the mobile network to Bluetooth. It also lets you set up a new connection for a number of options (most notably Wi-Fi, which will play a big part in the evolution of the Storm range after it was left out of the first model).
The sleek and weighty feel of the Storm 2 is that of a quality piece – the SurePress screen needs that around it. It’s also busting to the seams with applications pre-installed, and a 2GB card isn’t too shabby either. Texting is amazingly easy too, and it excels when actually trying to tap out a message thanks to the intuitive auto-correct.
Overall, the BlackBerry Storm2 is a much improved phone over its predecessor and is great for even the smartphone beginner in all of us. The best thing I like about Verizon’s Blackberry offering is the customer service and when I mean customer service I am talking about my good friend and BlackBerry Specialist, Lance Burkhardt (Twitter Username: @SirLance99 or @SirSynct). If you ever have issue with your phone, are still not sure about features or how to use it, Lance is a phone call or text away. He provides personal service by coming to you and is interested in building a long lasting relationship rather than a number. Make sure you contact him if you are in the central Ohio area and interested in great products and great service.
